


Alias: Phil Coulson

by amireal



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Spoilers, Alternate Origin Story, Family Issues, Fix-It, Identity Issues, M/M, Not Iron Man 3 Compliant, Not Thor 2 Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:04:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1218760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amireal/pseuds/amireal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is a series of decisions that you have to live with until you die, even if you're not really dead. Phil Coulson is the sum of his parts, but sometimes only the sum of the parts he wants to be. History always has a way of catching up with you no matter how hard and how far you run, the world is round after all and eventually you end up exactly where you started.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one spans a lot of time, the reasons Agents of SHIELD is listed is because it passes into that time and while technically it goes AU, it does reference some of what goes on in there but this was plotted before too much of the season was shown.
> 
> See the end for plot based trigger warnings.

Five minutes into reading the compiled dossier on the Black Widow and Coulson’s instincts are up, when he is done, he carefully pulls out the images attached to the file and thumbs through them slowly and methodically. Photographs sometimes get a bad rap, people assume that the slice of time they show is always true, but sometimes they can catch you going from one moment to the next and that small slice of life from in between is a lie. 

He finds two possible lies in a batch of thirty, but they are specific and something about them makes Coulson uncomfortable. So he puts in a request for all the video they have. Normally, this early in an operation, most agents, including himself, would leave it to the analysts to file down the excess data, leave out the hours of surveillance with nothing to show but several hundred people missing the public trash can or walking dully home from work at the end of a long day. It, however, isn’t all that unusual for Coulson to request extra data, even this early, he is handed the special projects after all, the kind that everyone else already knew wouldn’t be successful with just the standard mission protocol.

Coulson spends the next few hours clearing paperwork off his desk and debating the timing, on one hand no one might notice if he waited and simply took them out of standard surveillance reach when he knew more, on the other hand a pattern of behavior starting long before anyone even began putting together the mission briefing might be more useful. March in New York City gave him plenty of opportunities and the next dark and rainy day comes quickly.

Clint Barton lives in Brooklyn and has access to an emergency vehicle nearby but in general he prefers the subway to having to deal with a car in a neighborhood that barely has enough parking spots for half its tenants, not to mention alternate side cleaning days which were just too much on his unpredictable schedule. The SHIELD emergency car is considered a SHIELD asset and therefore is someone else’s responsibility. In reality he also has a motorcycle hidden away nearby, because he trusts SHIELD, but he isn’t an idiot. All of that aside, it still makes miserable spring days full of dirty melting snow and constant rain kind of terrible.

Coulson knows all of this, which is why it takes very little effort to convince Barton to take the ride home when he offers, it is more effort to make his wandering down to the shooting range look random and unplanned. Coulson lives in Queens and knows the streets between the BQE and the LIE well enough that it’s not actually too much out of his way. Coulson spends a few minutes trying to find a way to start the conversation when Barton offers him lunch out on the next sunny day, as a thanks. He accepts quickly and lets the car ride home be exactly that, a favor for a colleague he likes to think of as a friend.

Like all March days in the city, the weather is a zig zagging, passive aggressive, attack on thermometers. So the next day dawns bright and sunny and warm enough that the top layer of grimy slush melts happily into the nearest storm drain. Barton appears in his office at 12:30 practically bouncing in anticipation and Coulson sighs heavily and plays his part, which makes Barton’s smile broader, grumbling good naturedly about terminally happy people.

It’s actually a surprise when Barton’s face changes after the waitress takes their orders and delivers their drinks. “So, what’s the matter?” Barton asks him and it’s such an unexpected change in demeanor that it actually shocks him into silence for a few seconds. Barton just waits patiently.

“I need a favor.” Coulson eventually says.

Barton’s face remains serious and Coulson realizes that either he’s genuinely this out of practice or Barton knows him a lot better than Coulson is willing to admit to himself. Either of those options worries him.

“In a few weeks you’ll receive a preliminary briefing on a target with a preliminary kill order attached.” Barton’s eyes widen a little, preliminary kill orders only get tacked onto the worst possible subjects, the people that despite the information they might carry, aren’t worth the possible damage they might cause when someone attempts to capture them alive. “I need you to bring her in.” 

Barton blows out a slow breath. “You want me to bring in Black Widow. Against orders.”

That Barton guesses his target isn’t all that surprising but this is where Coulson’s planning has fallen short because what he’s actually asking Barton to do is play the rogue agent. It’ll be primarily his job and life on the line, whereas while Coulson will take a hit, it’ll be nowhere near Barton’s because Coulson is asking him to make it his own decision. He’s not sure how Barton will react to this.

“Why?” Barton asks, “You’ve got the clout, you could probably do this without even a disciplinary hearing. I know you, you’re good enough that it wouldn’t even effect your security clearance.” His hands are clutching his mug of hot cocoa tightly, the only obvious sign of distress. His psych profile says that he probably thinks there’s a chance this is a loyalty test, or just an easy way to get rid of two assets for the price of one. How he reacts will be a testament to his loyalty to Coulson more than SHIELD.

So Coulson gives him a peace offering. "Because I already had my Once In a Career. I do it, it's a pattern, you do it, you're paying it forward and because this time there are options, next time there might not be and I cannot have my career be flagged for suspicious activity if I can avoid it.”

It takes Barton a few seconds to parse that and then his eyes widen in shock. “You went against a kill order for me?” He waits for Coulson’s nod before continuing. “Why in the name of god would you take that risk on a punk kid with no formal training and absolutely no respect for anyone’s authority, earned or not.”

He doesn’t know why he does it, honestly, it’s actually a shock to him as the words leave his mouth. “Most people know that Fury recruited me.” Barton nods even as Coulson continues speaking. “Most of them don't know that he ignored a kill order to do it.”

“Sir.” Barton breathes out in shock. It’s the first time he addresses Coulson formally during their conversation and it warms him a little that this is what brings it out. “I…”

Coulson looks down and away from all of the emotion pouring out of Barton’s face for a half second, long enough to bring up that person he was fifteen years ago, that tired and sad person who had walked into a trap because it was easier than sorting it out the long way and despite his training and skill and knowledge, the long way seemed impossible and so impossibly difficult that he’d voluntarily walked into someone’s scope. It had been a camera at the time but he knew what letting that picture get taken would mean.

He meets Barton’s eyes and lets that man come out for the first time in a very long time and Barton swallows back a noise when he meets his gaze. “Phil.” It’s the first time Barton uses his first name and he manages to pack paragraphs of words into it, so much so that Coulson looks away again. A hand slips into his and it startles Coulson back into eye contact before he’s ready. “Phil,” he says again, “of course I’ll do you a favor.”

Their food arrives and it takes Coulson longer than he would like to admit to find his appetite again, but Barton’s sneak attack on his fries brings out his territoriality and he starts eating out of self defense. It takes him a while to realize that at no point during Barton’s various incursions into his personal space did he have to quell the urge to reach for any of the nearby silverware to use as weapons. Even Sitwell still gets a fork to the hand for trying to steal his food.

“So,” Barton says between bites, “tell me what you saw.”

Coulson lays it out, from the feeling he first had over her photos to the increasingly, but incredibly careful and very slowly expanding, sloppy work. “It’s only in our surveillance files, I checked out a few of the files from cooperative agencies. It’s definitely us she’s aiming for.”

“Well then,” Barton nods, “time to give her a bigger target.”

They finish out their meal, talking about more mundane things and Barton’s smile at him as they part seems more companionable than a few hours earlier. It sets something warm in Coulson’s belly.

He still doesn’t realize exactly how important their meeting is to him until two months later when Barton goes off comms without warning and his heart and throat both ache as he goes through the motions of being a proper handler knowing that this is part of the plan and that Barton cannot possibly do this if he’s in contact with SHIELD. This way he can technically be insubordinate without directly disobeying orders.

The clarity of the recording is perfect, they can hear the shifting of Barton’s clothes against his perch and the slight wind rustling the nearest tree. “I— there’s something wrong sir.” There’s a pause and then Barton’s voice talks over Phil’s request for clarification. “Sorry sir, but this isn’t right, please trust me.” There’s a jarring noise of the comm being careless shut off. 

“That’s all he said?” Nick Fury is actually a more patient man than most give him credit for. It’s a carefully cultivated personality quirk that often works to his, and usually Coulson’s, advantage.

“Yes sir.” Coulson puts down a file folder on Fury’s desk. “They traced his comm unit back to the roof top. I’ve ordered the local team to make sure it’s secure but to leave it in place. It’s probably his planned extraction scenario.”

“Assuming I don’t order him shot on sight?” Fury’s face belies the seriousness of his words and with a casual flick he turns on the privacy filters. Anyone doing oversight will probably assume they’re doing the preliminary planning of Barton’s death off the record so that when the order does go out there will be a clear chain of command and a united front. They give it a full five seconds to finish shutting off all internal surveillance except for a single shouted emergency code before Nick pulls out one of his damn awful cigars and gives Coulson a very long and knowing look. “So. What’s the plan?” 

“Plan?” He asks, sitting down in the comfortable chair, the one Nick keeps off to the side so that most visitors are stuck in the one closer to his desk, the hideously designed torture device designed to look like a chair. Coulson has never had a problem making Nick wait until he he’s comfortable when they’re alone and sometimes even when they’re not. “I had a plan, but Agent Barton blew it out of the water.”

“Lies.” Nick says. “I appreciate the plausible deniability but he does know that it’s gonna suck for him for a while when he comes back?”

“I’m sure,” Coulson says, wiping a non existent spec of dust off his suit, “that Agent Barton’s work for this mission is the same solid standard we’ve come to know and love from him.” Which means that yeah he’s read the briefing packets and possibly done some extra research but in general he cares fuck all if it doesn’t work for him in the field. Only, and this is where Coulson isn’t sure, but he thinks that Barton probably looked up exactly what sort of trouble Coulson might have gotten into when he took Barton in against orders. In their clandestine planning sessions, three in all, which NYC was happy to provide for in rainy days, Barton never asked what would happen after and if Coulson would be his advocate. While the latter could be inferred based on how Coulson had asked for his favor, it wouldn’t be out of the question to confirm it, but Barton never had.

That trust occasionally gives him nightmares.

Nick is still laughing when Coulson comes out of his little internal melodrama. “I really should have seen this coming,” Nick says, shaking his head, “and I’m only slightly mad that you’re risking our internal security by letting that woman anywhere near one of our bases or a SHIELD computer terminal.”

“Oh please,” Coulson gives him a bland smile, “it’ll be the intelligence coup of the year and you’ll rub it right in the CIA director’s nose during your next dick measuring contest.”

Nick just gives him a wide and smug smile and waves him out of the office. Coulson finds it easy to slip into the tense and angry face of a handler whose asset has just gone rogue as he stalks down the corridor.

There’s a post card in his mail when he finally gets home that night, well closer to morning. He is absolutely bone tired and worried within an inch of his life,it’s a little bit of a new feeling and it leaves him off center.

It’s an old contact trick. If you learn the major manufacturers it’s possible to send a message without too many identifying details being revealed. He gently turns over the card and he huffs out a quiet laugh. It’s an image of the Dredd Pirate Roberts holding an obviously photo shopped in, gaudily wrapped gift underneath is printed “Maybe I’ll kill you tomorrow.”

He checks the mailing date and knows that Barton must have timed it to arrive within 24 hours of his disappearance. There’s no hand written note, even his address is typed up on a label and hastily pasted on. He traces the slightly raised words on the label and sighs. The message is ambiguous, but Coulson thinks it means that Barton isn’t just doing this for him anymore, he sees it too, their target’s desperation.

He knows being able to go home in the middle of all this is a fluke. That she took a job in New York City of all places was only the last piece of the puzzle, it’s what made Coulson relax about his decision to bring her in. She is smart and she is good, so good that she can cherry pick her jobs, there would need to be an exceptionally good reason to walk into a city as well wired as New York which is also one of the satellite hubs for an agency that has had her name on the most wanted lists for years. Quite frankly all of the intel they found about her supposed job just isn’t good enough a reason.

No, she came to New York City for a reason and he just hopes to god it isn’t to get a bead on his asset.

Because SHIELD agents, no matter how some might protest it, are basically human beings that occasionally require rest and food, mission protocol states that if you are on premises and listed as an active agent in any ongoing op, you can have your comms patched into the live feed even if you’re not actually in the control room. There had been a problem of zombie like agents who either couldn’t bear to give up control for long enough to take care of themselves or couldn’t bear the stress of being that cut off. Mission mistake rates increased the longer an op unexpectedly ran into overtime. 

Director Fury, with Coulson’s input, had reworked the comm protocols and now senior handlers and mission shift directors could switch their comms to passive mode and still be aware of the exact status of their mission at any given time. Mission related naptime increased so dramatically they’d had to add a second on call suite for those who didn’t have rooms on base and for anyone who just didn’t want to be that far out of the action, the barracks were as far from anything likely to explode as possible. On Call Suite B is officially the quiet room and Phil’s second most favorite spot on base.

He’s officially taking a four hour nap, but mostly he’s staring into the darkened ceiling thinking about what he’ll do if he has to bring Barton home in a body bag. Retirement actually sounds pretty good, he doesn’t actually need to work, though the he has grown fond of the suits so maybe he’ll do some security consulting work. Just for the suits.

“…hey boss.” 

His comm crackles and it takes him a good five seconds to realize what’s happening. He takes his comm off passive mode and is already talking as he rushes out of the room. “Agent Barton, and here I was thinking my day would be paperwork light.”

“Aaaw, I’d never do that to you.” There’s a hitch in his voice that worries Coulson. “So, someone followed me home, can I keep her?”

Mission Control, which not a half hour ago was dead quiet, is lit up like Christmas. Fury steps in seconds behind him and Coulson squares his shoulders and plays his part.They play the ‘are you being coerced’ game and then the ‘how much medical care do you need’ game and then they get down to the nitty gritty. She wants to meet him, alone. Everyone in the room stills because that’s so far off missions protocol that Coulson should already be turning down the offer.

Instead he lets the silence linger until Barton comes back on the line. “Please, trust me.”

“Safehouse 55.” In his ear Barton whooshes out a loud breath and then swallows a hitched noise. He adds, “I’ll bring a first aid kit.”

“Knew I was your favorite.”

They sign off and Maria Hills is in his face before he can even pivot. Nick, for once, makes his life easier by cutting her off. “His call.” Her anger inflates to practically interstellar proportions, but she steps back.

Coulson is absolutely sure she’ll be investigating himself, if not Barton. “Blake. Put together a retrieval team, for Friendlies,” he adds, just in case, “include the medics and a cold asset team.”

When assets come in from the cold, especially assets of enemy governments or organizations, they must be handled carefully, with a balance of firm security and gentle care. They expect competency and therefore guards, but if you don’t treat them like human beings, you’re guaranteed a bloody, dangerous mess. The cold asset team specializes in this sort of treatment, intense security and scrutiny, tempered by the illusion of privacy and human rights. Cold assets start as comfortable prisoners but are on a specialized track to slowly be integrated into the rest of the organization, assuming the cold asset team approves each step.

Usually, Coulson is part of that team, Nick will probably step in and take Maria with him as an emotional alibi.

Coulson doesn’t breath easy until Barton is in his sights. He’s standing stiffly and his non dominant arm is curled around his chest carefully. Next to him is a woman who, Coulson knows from experience, can make herself look as harmless as a kitten but isn’t making that sort of effort at all. In a way it’s a compliment and a gesture of trust. She is saying ‘look at me, this is who I am’.

It’s what makes him start to trust her, that and the slowly spreading smile on Barton’s face as they meet.

“You’re gonna love her boss,” Barton says and if he were a puppy, his tail would be wagging so hard his butt would be moving. He also gives Coulson a wink and a nod which makes him relax even further. His time with the Black Widow has sealed his opinion, one that he shared with Coulson during their last planning session.

Coulson turns to her and gives her a long once over. She has injuries but is doing a better job of hiding them, or perhaps Barton just doesn’t feel he needs to hide his as well. There’s some scrapes and bruises and something nasty blooming on her temple but it all looks like soft tissue damage from where he’s standing.

“How do you prefer to be addressed?”

She eyes him curiously, probably trying to figure out if he actually cares about respecting her wishes or if this is the beginning of a long mind game. Barton limps to her side and leans in to whisper something, a serious look on his face. Whatever it is, it convinces her.

“You may call me Natasha Romanov.”

Coulson nods. “Ms. Romanov,” he sees her eyes widen fractionally at the extra courtesy, “I believe you are in need of some medical attention. Will you let us help you?”

She hesitates.

Coulson understands the impulse, “As per protocol, we cannot leave you unguarded, however you may disarm your person as much or as little as you want.” He nods to the gun in her hand. “We won’t press the issue unless it becomes obvious your motives are not what Agent Barton says they are.”

She takes a few careful steps closer to him and it takes a lot not to tense up or reach for the sidearm tucked into the small of his back. She studies him for long seconds before extending her hand. “My name is Natasha Romanov and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Coulson takes her hand and shakes it firmly, feeling matching gun callouses and a hidden strength, body and character, in her fingertips. “My name is Phil Coulson and the pleasure is all mine.”

Romanov smiles with real humor. They both see Barton coming up next to them, but they don’t expect him to clap them both firmly on the shoulder and smile goofily. “I knew you guys would like each other,” and then he pulls them into a group hug.

“Sorry,” Romanov mutters, trying to untangle Barton’s seemingly octopus like grasp on them, “I had to give him the narcotics before you got here.” 

Coulson laughs, putting together Barton’s absolutely delight and puppy like tendencies. “No problem, I’ve seen this before, he’ll wind down soon enough.”

Barton makes a mournful sound, “Oh god, it never occurred to me that you’d gang up on me.”

Romanov makes a tsking sound. “That wasn’t very smart of you, now was it?”

Barton is magnificent in the debrief. He sells the idea of kindred spirits looking for a way out with such simplicity and grace of emotion and feeling that Coulson is cleared with barely any thought. So when Barton is released from lockdown and medical clears him with instructions to take it easy and not lift his arms over his head for a few weeks, Coulson signs up to be his supervisory agent for the duration. Which means that his one month suspension, which is coincidently the length of his medical leave, is going to spent in Coulson’s spare bedroom.

Coulson takes Barton to his apartment and carries Barton’s bag inside for him. It’s June and the sunniest days are now inching over into the 70s during the middle of the day making it just a little too warm for people who just the previous week still carried gloves around for the evening hours. They both sigh happily as they walk into the wall of cool air waiting for them inside and Coulson is again not sorry he spent as much money as did on the air conditioners.

He removes his jacket and shows Barton to the bedroom, points out where the towels and the door to the bathroom lives and leaves him to get settled and arrange lunch. To keep everything tidy, Coulson is officially on a carefully suggested vacation for a week. Nick will call in a few days to let him know if he should extend it. 

Coulson has narrowed it down to Chinese or Italian when Barton shuffles out of the hallway looking sheepish. “I was going to take a shower but I can’t get my shirt off.” He’s wearing a soft looking gray t-shirt that he might have been able to get on himself this morning, but the trip out of headquaters and to Coulson’s apartment has probably done nothing but aggravate his bruised ribs and Coulson knows for a fact that Barton will probably avoid the heavy painkillers for everything but sleep.

He would lay odds that Barton has only t-shirts, so he holds up a finger and disappears into his bedroom. In the back of his closet there are a series of button down shirts that he hasn’t worn in years. So long ago that the styles are a little out of date, shirts were worn looser and a bit more carefree and so they won’t be tight over Barton’s shoulders the way the current style would be. The fabrics are also soft and expensive and will probably not irritate Barton’s sensitive and bruised skin. He grabs five of them, solidly colored in muted jewel tones that Barton seems to enjoy and returns to the living room, prize in hand.

Barton’s smile is grateful as Coulson lays the shirts over the back of a nearby chair before neatly stepping forward to grasp as the hem of Barton’s shirt. The thing of it is, it really does start innocently, but something about how it ends, with Barton’s face flushed, from pain really, and hair mussed but smiling shyly changes it completely.

His torso is disturbing, almost more bruise than skin and Coulson imagines that he can feel the heat from the swelling even across the foot of empty space between them. It takes a minute for Coulson’s brain to move from his hand disrobing Barton to registering the visual evidence of Barton’s injuries. He immediately feels guilty because while in general he feels a vague sense of responsibility for most of Barton’s injuries these feel more connected to him, in a very real way he asked Barton to take these on. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“No,” Barton shakes his head, “as soon as I saw her through the scope, I saw what you saw.” Unspoken is that he finds the pain worth it.

As his habit has been recently in Barton’s presence, Coulson’s body acts before the thoughts can form and his hand gently touches the overly warm skin on his ribs. His entire hand settles in time to feel Barton’s entire body shift with a swiftly inhaled breath, he winces in sympathy. He’s ready to remove his hand and apologize but his fingers catch on something familiar, it’s subtle and noticeable only because he’s felt it before, on his own skin.

“You have tattoo covers,” Coulson murmurs, fingers moving to feel out the image, Barton’s hand covers his and gently pushes him in the right direction, feeling out two long lines, one straight and one curved. “A bow?”

“My first.” Barton’s voice is quiet and little quavery.

Suddenly it seems important to explain, to tell Barton just a little bit. To bare his soul to another person for the first time in over a decade. Coulson’s free hand lifts to his tie and undoes the knot with one hand, sliding it out of the channel his shirt collar makes without any effort. The buttons on his shirt are also easily undone single handedly and the tails slowly pull out of his pants as he carefully shrugs the left sleeve and shoulder off, Barton swallows back a noise that Coulson is definitely going to look into later. Then he draws Barton’s right hand up to his bicep and lets his fingers trace the faint, faint outlines leftover from his own set of tattoo covers. 

Barton explores the outlines silently, he frowns a little, searching for something. “I thought,” he trails off pressing a little more firmly a confused frown marring his face, “I thought you probably had something military-ish, but this—” he deliberately traces the external lines of the image, pausing only when Coulson shivers at the touch. He goes over it three times before stopping, startled.

Coulson puts his finger to Clint's lips and shushes him before he can say it out loud. They stay like that, frozen, his left index finger feeling the warm, damp breaths from Barton’s mouth and in return Barton’s entire palm pressing over his invisible tattoo.

Their hands move at the same time, the one on his shoulder slides up and around his neck, the hands Coulson has on Barton do the same, index finger joining the rest of the hand on the back of Barton’s neck, his right hand, still pressing gently against bruised ribs goes back until his fingertips dip into the hollow of Barton’s backbone. The kiss is soft, so very soft and gentle and it makes Coulson’s eyes close reflexively. Their mouths open at the same time, parted lips doing nothing more than hint at deeper kisses, one of them makes a terrible noise in the back of their throat, it’s a cross between and moan and a sob and Coulson quite honestly isn’t sure who makes it and who echoes it.

It’s the touch of Barton’s too warm skin against his own that stops him from pushing for more, instead he pulls away gently only to touch their foreheads together. “Clint.”

“Phil.” There’s a smile in Bart-Clint’s rough voice. “You are the sexiest onion I have ever met.” A beat. “You know, layers?”

Phil closes his eyes in mock pain. “I have no idea why I like you so much.”

Clint’s thumb strokes his cheek. “Yeah, you do,” he says quietly.

“Yeah.” He agrees just as quietly. In the best of ways, they are the same and in the best of ways, they are different. Clint’s heart has always called to him and he’s only just following it home as he kisses Clint again and again, softly, insistently, carefully. Cherishing it against his own.

It takes them a long time to untangle enough to call for food and after they are full of delicious pasta Phil moves to change and Clint admonishes him to leave the shirt off. Instead of going to the guest bedroom, or even Phil’s, he guides Phil back to the couch, arranges him to his liking and then curls up on top of him murmuring about his skin being the most comfortable thing he’s napped on in weeks, then wraps them both in the softest blanket in Phil’s apartment. “To think,” Clint yawns, handing Phil the remote control, “originally all I wanted was a relaxing shower.”

He strokes a hand down Clint’s back, “You still can.”

“Nah,” Clint nuzzles the patch of skin under his nose, “this is better.”

They spend a lazy, honey colored, molasses filled week where Clint wraps himself around Phil any chance he can. There’s a few hours where Clint searches for Phil’s other tattoos all the while asking careful questions.

“They perfected the Tattoo covers for me.” Phil says sleepily as Clint’s fingers run under his collar bone and down his right arm. “Originally the suits were an easy and efficient way to cover my identifying markers. Most of their placements were still specific, I wanted to be able to cover them fairly easily if needed, no reason to be caught out because I was dumb enough to put a tattoo on my hand or low on my forearm.”

Phil knows that Clint is feeling better, or at least, a bit more flexible, the night they’re in bed and his tongue does a circuit of the hidden tattoo on Phil’s hip. They exchange long, luxurious blow jobs that leave them both breathless and dazed.

Mostly though, they talk, they talk about everything and anything, Clint kindly walks around the bits that Phil obviously doesn’t want to talk about and Phil returns the favor, but they still manage to share a lot.

“Captain America?” Clint asks, a single finger trailing the edge of a framed poster.

“He uses a gun,” Phil answers slowly, “he uses a gun and doesn’t shy away from killing when he has to and somehow that doesn’t diminish him in the eyes of his fans.”

That answer gets Phil pinned to the nearest wall and kissed so thoroughly his lips feel puffy and sore when they’re done.

One evening, over Japanese food, Phil actually likes sushi while Clint’s main course is a noodle dish that smells delicious, Clint asks about the diplomas on the wall.

“Backdated, but real,” Phil looks away, but admits carefully. He’s embarrassed for absolutely no reason and he thinks it’s because this is the most open he’s been with another human being in a very long time. In some ways he’s no longer Agent Coulson, Senior Handler and Field Agent, but Phil, an amalgamation of that desperate person he was and the person he’s grown into despite the fact that in the beginning, it was nothing more than an alias.

Fifteen years ago he and Nick Fury sat down and picked out things that had pinged his interest in adolescence but had been left behind after his father’s arrest. They spent hours extrapolating where those interests might lead him so that Phil won’t be stuck with habits and background traits that he absolutely despised. It would take years to undo any root personality trait of his new alias, so they had to be meticulous, careful and above all, right.


	2. Chapter 2

Three years of dating as Agents of SHIELD is both less and more time than what one gets in a normal life. Their personal time is limited, but what there is of it is intense, emotional, and sweaty. In the interim they, plus Natasha, make a name for themselves at SHIELD. They are legends in a way that sometimes makes Phil deeply uncomfortable, though Natasha likes to explain how that simply means there’s less work in scaring the baby agents and Phil likes to explain that’s not necessarily his life’s goal. She usually gives him a deeply disappointed look at that point and Clint just smiles goofily at them, so obviously happy that they get along.

The truth is, he likes Natasha on a personal level and he empathizes with her in ways he will probably never explain to her. He knows she’s seen it, it confuses her but she respects him enough never to ask. There’s a night, after they rescue Clint from a dingy cell in the bottom of a damp warren of caves cum secret lair, where he and Natasha _are_ the strike team. They have backup, but the reality is that the people who follow them are mostly to move the bodies out of sight and to maybe toss them some spare ammunition now and then.

It’s the first time they work together in that way, before he was the voice in her ear or the man she passed information to. She knows he’s trained, she’s seen him running along next to her and Clint, shooting with precision and accuracy, occasionally resorting to hand to hand, but what they do in that compound is different. He wears a suit for the retrieval. He has to or he’ll forget, he concedes to one of SHIELD’s amazingly light and advanced bullet proof undershirts and a vest, but he wears it over a tie and under his jacket.

After he unlocks Clint’s wrists and ankles from the chains with disturbing stains they hand him a gun and take turns making sure Clint stays on his feet, though they never worry about his aim, Clint can hit the target half unconscious and blind stumbling drunk, no Natasha and Phil just have to make sure Clint keeps moving more than anything else. By this time the secondary infiltration team is probably almost done with the information retrieval and is getting ready to leave a trail of C4 breadcrumbs on their way out but Phil and Natasha don’t care because they are lowering Clint onto a seat in the medical helicopter and ordering it to take off. For once, Phil isn’t even remotely in charge of an operation he’s participating in so he gets to ignore it in favor of watching someone else insert IVs into Clint’s veins and patching up his abused wrists.

That night, Natasha sits next to him in Clint’s hospital room and stares straight ahead. She squeezes his hand and he squeezes back. They are both prismatic products of their training and he knows she recognizes the signs of things unseen, unsaid. Maybe that’s what starts the changes, maybe it’s the strange guilty feeling in the middle of his chest that Clint should know more, be privy to more, than anyone else.

Maybe, he just needs Clint to know him, all of him.

The look on Nick’s face when he slides a slim folder across Phil’s desk stops him cold. He opens it and reads silently then closes it again. “Has it been 32 years already?”

“Time flies.” Nick says flatly and then takes a small tin, the size of a medium altoids container, out of his pocket and puts it on top of the folder. “I know you still have the IDs, go if you need to.”

Phil takes the tin, just as calmly, and opens it. Inside it is divided into to sections. One side the cream, the other, two pills. He stares it and without looking up he says, “I’m taking Barton with me.”

“I upped his clearance six month ago.” Nick tells him, which mostly means Nick knew something like this was coming. Technically Phil is high up enough in the food chain that he can make decisions about a lot of sensitive data on the fly, no paperwork needed, until later. He’s also high enough in the food chain that his personal life in general tends to be eyes only so Clint still has an official residence in Brooklyn but spends most of his time in Queens and that their talk of moving in together includes nothing of subletting the apartment in Brooklyn. In reality Natasha’s address leads to nowhere and she manages Clint’s apartment.

When Clint reads the file, he frowns in confusion so Phil runs an index finger over a line and let’s Clint come to the conclusion on his own. “How old were you?”

“By the end of it? Ten,” Phil shrugs carefully, “I never went into the system, his sister-in-law took me in.” He stares into Clint’s eyes and forces the rest of it out. “I became an apprentice not long after. To earn my keep.”

“Your Uncle is a real prize.” Is the only thing Clint says.

“Step.” Phil corrects. “There was a remarriage involved. Family appellations got a little—” he sticks his hand out and waffles it back and forth.

They travel as Agent Coulson and Agent Barton on a SHIELD transport, at the other end they grab a rental car and check into a moderately priced hotel room. Before bed, Phil takes the activator and Clint spreads the cream onto his left bicep, right hip bone and in a meandering pattern across his collar bone and down his right bicep. Phil sucks in a surprised gust of air when Clint takes out his own tin. He swallows the pill and then hands the cream to him. Phil marks a line across Clint’s ribs, bicep, forearm and the small of his back.

It dries in five minutes and they crawl into bed exhausted. Sleep is full of strange dreams and recognizable faces that fade in and out of focus. When the alarm goes off Phil feels like he never really got to sleep and Clint looks about the same.

They share the shower and Clint spends a lot of time carefully scrubbing off the dried paste to reveal the black edges of Phil’s tattoos. No, not Phil’s. Not really. When they’re all visible Clint stares at him, a little lost before his face resolves into something a little like love and a lot like support. Phil feels undone and exposed already and then Clint wraps his hand around Phil’s cock and it all goes a little hazy for a little while.

Phil’s hands shake as he returns the favor, first revealing the tattoos and then curling around Clint’s hot and needy erection.

Clint finishes dressing while Phil spends some time lost in the full length mirror in the hall. Looking back at him is a man he left behind a long time ago and it feels weird to see him living in his 42 year old body. Clint is actually wearing a suit, but no tie. Phil pulls on black dress pants over his silk boxers. He learned early on to build a character from the ground up, how important it can be maintaining your cover. The pants however are not his usual fair, if Clint had once remarked that his suits were classy and expensive, these pants are a custom tailored merino silk and wool blend that sit on his body so perfectly he can see Clint’s eyes dilate when he gets a good look at him. 

He reaches for his silk and cotton blend blue shirt, a shade darker than royal, but Clint beats him there and offers it up like a gentleman with a coat. The material glides over his skin like the softest cloud and Clint does the buttons up for him, leaving the top two undone, showing only hints at the now visible tattoo there. The shirt is tucked in for him, Clint’s hands smoothing down each inch of fabric, followed by the button on his pants and the careful threading of a leather belt. Clint’s hands next roll up Phil’s sleeves to expose his fore arms and the expensive watch that sits perfectly on his wrist.

His wallet, broken in, but expensive and new looking slips into his back pocket and Clint offers his matching, also custom tailored jacket to slip on. Clint drives them to the courthouse because Phil is now a man who doesn’t drive himself if he doesn’t want to, but he’s careful to get out before Clint can open the door for him. Clint is not his employee for this, he is a trusted associate. He slips on his thickly framed but also expensive sunglasses and leaves them on when they step inside. He’ll remove them later to show deference and respect to the court, but for now he enjoys the one extravagant bit of SHIELD tech he has with him. From his side of the lenses, they are clear and he can easily see the everyone and everything in the hallway with them.

He has a moment during the security sweep, where they ask his name, he nearly stumbles over it but manages to force the syllables out. Unfortunately his last name only piques the guards interest anyway. “Sullivan. Huh.” Phil ignores it politely and hands over his photo ID.

It’s all a little anticlimactic until he recognizes his uncle. They take a seat in the back, but they won’t be able to to stay under wraps for too long because eventually someone will ask that question he’s still not sure how to answer.

“I understand the inmates immediate family is here?”

That gets the crowd going but it’s Clint’s squeeze of his hand that gets him to rise. “I am.”

“And you are?”

“Micheal Sullivan.”

“His… son?”

He opens his mouth afraid nothing will come out, but that’s not who he is right now so he nods. “At one time.”

The harried parole board woman that’s talking gives him a sort of sad smile. “Do you have a statement you wish to make?”

The entire room must take a breath at the same time and he realizes that there’s nothing. “No, no I don’t.”

The _man_ handcuffed into the chair in the center has the audacity to look hurt and betrayed and that makes it all a little easier to swallow. His part done, Phil sits and then deliberately pulls out a paperback and starts reading. Clint taps his his foot twice signaling situational awareness, feel free to daydream.

The words ‘Parole denied’ filter through and he puts away the book as they stand to leave. It’s obvious the rest of the Family is going to follow but they’re cut off as an older man with a slightly ill fitting suit steps between them and the angry mob.

“Mikey Sullivan, I gotta tell you, I thought you were dead.”

“Micheal.” Phil corrects absently. “And that was what you were supposed to think.” Then he gets a look at who’s talking. “Officer,” he finally processes who’s standing in front of him, it’s not an ill fitting suit, but a badly tailored uniform, “Sorry, Captain.” Phil frowns and then checks the name on the tag on the guy’s chest. “Callahan?”

“Last time I saw you, you were a punk kid heading down a bad path.” Callahan pronounces. 

Phil graces him with a withering, but bored look and then carefully and deliberately puts his sunglasses back on. “Last time I saw you, you were a judgmental asshole.” He can feel Clint stiffen a little, Agent Coulson uses words like weapons, carefully placed cuts in vulnerable areas, Michael Sullivan is careful in other ways. 

Captain Callahan bristles at the insult, but only raises judgmental eyebrow. “How long you been in town?”

“And I see little has changed. We got in last night.” Clint falls into step next to him just so he can be sure Phil sees the amusement in the crinkle of his eyes. “Though I must say this is a record for alibi checks. Even for me.” Beside him Clint coughs into his hand, Phil side-eyes him from behind his glasses. 

“Don’t leave town.” Callahan warns him with a meaty finger and a glare.

Phil loses it, he laughs, huge peals of laughter that actually make Clint look concerned. He waves him off and wipes a tear from his eye. “Oh god. No, tell me, how many crimes did you blame on me before you realized you were never gonna find me?”

Callahan goes ruddy, which only serves to emphasize his bushy eyebrows and neatly trimmed beard. “That’s it, you can come downstairs for questioning.”

Now he’s having fun, so he gives a courteous little bow and head-tilts for Clint to follow along.

“Your body guard is gonna have to wait outside.”

That one makes them both laugh right up until an unfamiliar hand closes around his arm. He moves without thinking, grasp, twist, slam, press. He has the offender shoved against the wall, arm pulled sharply behind him and nerve cluster securely pressed under Phil’s thumb. In three heartbeats he can tell it’s a lackey sent to either pass on a message, distract the cops somehow, or both in some foul attempt to ingratiate themselves into Phil’s life. He lets go before Callahan or the beat cops standing around can do anything and after Clint steps into his personal space, covering his back.

“Don’t touch me.” Phil enunciates carefully. The lackey nods abruptly and then gets his pasty face out of sight, the knowledge that he barely escaped without a dislocated shoulder evident in his eyes.

They’re escorted, but the beat cops do not touch them, down the hall, down two flights of stairs and into a large open room with a lot of desks stacked high with paperwork and cops. Phil tastes the bile of old nostalgia in the back of his throat and it gives a decent fight to how hilarious he finds this whole thing. 

In the intervening years, this particular precinct hasn’t changed all that much. The walls have that slightly softened look of dozens of layers of paint, the desks look like dented 60s school teacher rejects and the bars on the windows have only been half replaced. They’re in what used to be the Burglary division, but it looks like at some point Homicide moved in and there’s a manila folder with peeling tape sticking unevenly to the wall in the corner that proclaims it the Organized Crime Task Force.

Phil deliberately picks a small, file free, corner of the desk they’re left at to sit down. Callahan harrumphes but doesn’t object, probably because Clint carelessly sprawls into the free chair and starts playing angry birds. Phil leans over and sees that Clint is still on the same level as earlier this week so he points out the first target to be helpful. Clint’s eyes take on a speculative look and stops to reevaluate his strategy. This happens in silence and he can tell it pisses the Captain off as well.

They continue to passive aggressively play video games until another face that Phil vaguely recognizes sits down. It’s Callahan’s old partner. “Mikey.” Phil snorts and wonders if he should offer interrogation and intimidation courses to the NYPD when they get back.

“Micheal.” He gently tsks. “I’m 42 years old. Can we all agree that’s an idiotic name for a 42 year old?” Phil then makes a deliberate sweep of the desk to find the name plate. “Detective Holtz? Ah. The illustrious Captain Callahan’s former parter.” 

“So,” Holtz says sitting down, “Mikey, the room is busy, so let’s just get the preliminaries out of the way.”

Bait taken. They’ll harp on the name for a good fifteen minutes before realizing he could give a shit. “We arrived last night at the private air field just outside of the city, I’m sure they’ll be incredibly excited to hand over their logs. Our pre-arranged rental car met us there where we then went directly to the hotel, checked in, ordered room service and went to bed. I’m sure the car service will be equally excited to dump the GPS recorder on the car.” 

Holtz makes a face and hands Phil a pen and paper. “Names and phone numbers.” Then he turns to Clint. “What’s your story?”

Clint puts up a finger to indicate he’ll be with them in a moment, the gesture looks suspiciously familiar to Phil only instead of reading a file, Clint is finishing off his last Angry Bird shot. Phil isn’t sure he’ll be able to keep it together if Clint decides to play Phil Coulson. Clint takes great pains to turn his phone off, polish the screen and then slip it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Clinton. Francis. Barton.”

It takes everything Phil has to not suck in a surprised breath. SHIELD has a complex relationship with identity and former criminals. Most of the previous most wanted they recruit are usually guilty of the same things they would be ordered to do under SHIELD auspices. The redacted fingerprint program is actually a technological offshoot of the tattoo covers. Clint’s official birth certificate in his SHIELD folder says Clint Barton, his official fingerprints have been redacted from every database they can reach and in everyday life Clint, like all other SHIELD agents has altered prints.

Phil realizes that Clint has accompanied him as himself. The guy that Phil recruited out of an alleyway with a bland smile and promise of fair hearing. Even if he plays Phil Coulson, the gesture makes him breathless all the same.

“Francis,” Callahan snorts, like he isn’t from a deeply Irish Catholic family on both sides. 

“What can I say,” Clint crosses his legs and gives them a bland smile, “my parents were abusive from the beginning.” It is absolutely strange watching this happen from the outside. It’s not all him, but it is Phil Coulson if he’d had Clint Barton’s background. The comment is a thing of beauty and it flummoxes both Callahan and Holtz. “Also our hotel uses keycards and our room is on the 5th floor, unless one of us were an acrobat,—”

“Or Batman,” Phil cannot help but interject.

Clint acknowledges the addition with a nod, “it’s too high to egress any way but the door. I’m sure the desk clerk will be suitably terrified by a warrant and print out the entry/exit information for our room.” 

Phil picks up where Clint leaves off, “There are also cameras in all parts of the hotel, including the hallway outside of our room, please start there as we didn’t plan to be in town longer than tonight and that will be the quickest information to gather, you won’t even need a warrant, just ask hotel security if we left the room, they might answer as long as you don’t demand to see the footage.”

Callahan and Holtz spend the entire double act looking more and more annoyed and Phil would feel bad but they were really being lazy here, also showing their hand by direct confrontation is just dumb. If they ever do get their hands on the footage, Phil and Clint’s arrival at the hotel might raise some eyebrows only because their clothing choices were completely out of character for this little charade, but these guys probably won’t notice enough of the nuances for it to matter.

“Now,” Clint stands, “if that will be all, we’ll be heading back to the hotel.”

They’re halfway across to the door when Callahan’s voice cuts over the distinct noise of the squad room. “We all know your family doesn’t need to be anywhere near the body in order for someone to die.”

Phil freezes and lets out a slow breath, but doesn’t turn around. “They are not my family,” his voice is arctic cold, so are his fingers, “they have not been my family for a very long time. If any of them asked me for a favor I would go out of my way to do the opposite and you can sure has hell bet that I’d think twice before I participated in _any_ action that would be seen as positive from their point of view.” He takes another long breath, Clint taps his foot in support and his shoulders slump. “Let it go Jonathon.” He addresses Callahan by name, suddenly so very weary, “It was a long time ago.”

They leave the precinct unmolested, but there’s a dark suit smoking and leaning against their car a half block away. It’s his uncle. They can both spot the discrete security hanging around a half block away or so in all directions. It doesn’t worry either of them all that much, even though Phil can see that his uncle wasted no time at all rearming himself. Guys like his uncle and most of his goons are quantity shooters, not quality. They hire out for quality.

Phil and Clint stop several feet away and await the opening salvo.

“Mikey.” His uncle says.

Phil makes a show of rolling his eyes and looking unimpressed. “Micheal.”

His uncle, instead of shrugging it off, nods carefully, as if tucking the name away for use later. That’s when Phil realizes he’s being treated with respect, which means they are shit scared of him, that’s pretty delicious. “Michael. We thought you were dead.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.” Phil is noncommittal. 

His uncle takes a long drag of the cigarette in his mouth then drops it to the ground and stubs it out. “We were worried about you.”

Oh and there’s the anger, the absolute fury, he’s been waiting for, it churns up his gut like hot lava over coals. “No you weren’t,” he sneers, “you were worried about who I’d run away with.” Phil steps closer and clenches his hands to avoid doing something that will bring in the security. “What was it you feared more? The information I might have had or the skills he might have taught me? God look at you, I was 15 but I was too damn smart and you hadn’t decided if you were gonna eliminate me or crown me your successor and you got pissed that the decision was taken from your hands. By the way, the hit you put out on me only pissed him off more.”

Behind him, he can feel Clint vibrate with tension at the new information, he shifts so that they’re back to back, a defensive stance that eases some of the muscles in Phil’s shoulders.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Phil reveals, “so get the hell away from me and my car and if I hear that you’ve gone looking for me, what he did to your hit man will be rainbows and puppies compared to what happens to you.”

His uncle engages in a futile staring contest before nodding and moving off. Clint and Phil make a show of examining the car before evening undoing the alarm. They pop the hood, the trunk, the gas tank and kneel on the asphalt to check the undercarriage. Phil finds the dust on his pants especially offensive and wonders if it’s worth the hassle to send his uncle the dry cleaning bill.

When they return to the hotel, Phil is still vibrating with energy, he’s afraid to use the in house gym, it’s too public and the equipment isn’t meant for his skill level. Then the door closes and Clint shoves him hard against the wall, because it’s Clint his hands only clutch at his shoulders, waiting for his next move.

Clint licks his neck, bites down a bit and then hotly whispers, “You are amazing, now you should fuck me over that desk in the corner.” 

Every bit of angry energy shifts and suddenly he’s so hard it makes him a little light headed. He pulls Clint into a desperate kiss, sucking on his tongue and then letting him return the favor. “I am going to fuck you,” Phil explains, tearing off Clint’s jacket and untucking his shirt, “You are so fucking hot we won’t even get all the way undressed, I can’t wait that long, you make me crazy.” By the time their belts are on the floor, Clint is bent over the desk, flushed and panting. Phil’s jacket is somewhere back by the bed and somehow there’s a bottle of lube pressed into his hands.

Phil just pushes Clint’s pants far enough out of the way to gain the access he needs. With little fanfare Clint’s body sucks up the first finger he presses inside. He crooks it gently and Clint starts to make high pitched whines. “Come on, tell me when.” Phil grits out, he won’t unzip until then because he’s in danger of just shoving his way inside he’s so turned on and turned inside out by this. He doesn’t feel like himself and it’s easier to be a little dirtier, a little rougher. His right hand grips Clint’s hip so hard there’s colorless indents surrounding his fingers, there will be bruises tomorrow and the idea makes him shudder.

“Another.” Clint’s voice hitches on the last syllable and Phil barely waits for him to finish before pulling out and then pushing back in with two. Meanwhile his hips are busily rubbing his cloth covered cock back and forth against Clint’s side and it feels so good that he loses time just pushing back and forth, his cock and his fingers until Clint’s hand squeezes his. 

“Yes— nng— now, now.”

Phil doesn’t need any more than that, his slick hand is already in his pants while his clean one is unzipping, he doesn’t remember when the unbuttoning happened, he’s lining up, his aching cock head already pushing against muscle and oh god it feels so amazing, the heat so close to the head. Condoms only occur to him as he’s mid push and the heat and tightness shorts something out so he gasps, “condom,” even as he bottoms out.

“S’fine, s’fine, we’ll talk about it later,” Clint slurs, reaching back to snag onto one of Phil’s belt loops to keep him close.

Phil molds himself to Clint’s back and takes a deep breath, savoring all the contradicting feelings, the scrunched up fabric of Clint’s shirt under his chest, the smooth silk of his underwear bunched up under his balls, Clint’s amazing and welcoming heat holding him in, up. It’s all so fucking amazing. Clint grabs his hand and threads their fingers. “C’mon,” he whispers, “c’mon.”

So he does, he bends them just enough for Clint to brace on the, thankfully, screwed to the floor desk, and then he takes one long pull away only to push back in one forceful stroke. The thrusts are sharp and fast, but never violent, Clint’s legs begin to tremble flatteringly fast and he meets Phil in the middle with enthusiasm.

Then one down stroke buckles Clint’s arms and his entire body curls into itself and he makes a high pitched ‘Oh, oh, oh,” and he freezes, “oh one more Phil, one more,” and Phil is doing it before realizes that Clint is coming and coming and he’s squeezing Phil’s cock so perfectly and Phil hasn’t even touched Clint’s and that’s so amazing that before Clint even comes down Phil’s hips push out two more thrusts before his own orgasm rips across his nerves.

They are wrecked and Phil tucks his face into Clint’s neck to recover. They are still connected and Clint is mostly the one holding them up but Phil feels turned inside out and shattered and he can’t quite get his legs to move yet.

Once the anger is gone, drowned under a tide of satiation, his eyes burn and his open mouth panting into Clint's shoulder turns higher. It's not a lot, just two or three choked sobs, the last drips of a wrung out cloth, but Clint's arm reaches back and holds him through it.

Eventually they pick themselves up, shower, order room service and then fall on the food like a ravenous hoard. They rent a movie from the hotel menu, order more room service and then before bed they take their pills, carefully spread the cream and in the morning they shower off their old lives and go back to SHIELD.

A few weeks later Nick sends him a video of a pissed off detective in a bad suit yelling at a hotel manager. “What do you mean they checked out?”

After the hearing, Phil has trouble feeling comfortable in his own skin again and it takes him a while to realize it’s because it’s not actually his own skin. There’s a lot about him that is Agent Coulson, but their overlap is suddenly that much more obvious in the places where they no longer match. He thinks about it for a few weeks and then the annual SHIELD paint ball competition comes up and he CCs the paperwork to Clint.

Clint, after his first year of participation, was bestowed with very special competition rules applied to only him for almost all of SHIELD’s friendly competitions. In general, anything that involves hitting a target, any type of target, gets Clint some sort of handicap, be it a smaller team, a less efficient weapon, a smaller area of engagement, what have you. Clint is actually pretty tickled about it all and he’s more than happy to abide by the special rules. He takes it as a compliment and also knows that if he consistently kicks everyone’s ass within the first ten minutes of an event, no one will sign up for it anymore and Clint is smart enough to understand how morale boosting is supposed to work. Besides, if it’s something that involves no small amount of spy craft, everyone knows there’s at least four or five agents that have a good chance at beating him without skewing the odds. 

Clint’s paint ball tournament rules limit him to one team mate and kill shots only. Clint’s team gets their own color so that other players know when they’re down and when they can ignore the shot. Usually Natasha and he partner up and have the spy equivalent of a sleepover party, this year Natasha is out on assignment and Clint is ready to play an NPC trap instead. So when the paperwork shows up with Phil’s name in the team mate column it takes him a record thirty seconds to bust into Phil’s office and bounce on his toes. “Really??”

It’s because Agent Coulson never participates in the paint ball tournament. He doesn’t participate in a lot of the morale boosters as a player, but he does make an effort to participate in some manner about once a year. Never as an active combatant though. Until now. “Really.”

They don’t talk about why now or the other slow changes Phil is making to his cover identity, but Clint is there for each one, patiently waiting to find out what he can do to help. There’s not a lot that Clint can actively participate in, but he does little things like hum appreciatively when Phil slowly starts to add color to his wardrobe. His shirts slowly rainbow out into very subtle shades of blue and gray and the occasional lilac, which Clint takes special notice of how he manages to make it look bad ass. His ties change around the same time, into monochrome patterns and eventually stripes or even a diamond pattern. The first gray suit, well fitted, professional, a touch more expensive than Agent Coulson might have risked in his line of work, but it feels more comfortable than anything else he’s worn in a while.

Two weeks before Paintballapalooza, Clint’s term, one of the shooting galleries is converted into paint ball target practice because the guns for the game are just that different from what any of them usually carry and because of the skill set they all bring to the game everyone works from limited ammo, though not nearly as limited as Clint’s team. Also the general level of grumpiness class A work-a-holic control freaks like to exhibit when they don’t have a chance to practice means that everyone walks around with pain smears on their fingers for a few weeks.

For all the gossip the agency sometimes runs on, Phil’s participation is apparently still a secret, he’s fairly sure that’s because Clint took their paperwork directly to Nick, that son of a bitch walked around radiating smug for a few weeks a while back.

No one really notices when he steps into the modified range, though he does start to get a few whispers when he checks out a weapons and ammunition, the room’s noise level drops suddenly to all whispers when he picks a lane and it’s obvious he’s not just holding it for someone else. Then he takes off his jacket, no point in getting used to the slightly limited range of motion, he’s promised Clint he’ll wear the regulation tack suit. Because this is SHIELD and because they are professionals, the equipment is top of the line and comes in several shapes and sizes, Phil is testing a medium range rifle and a pistol that looks alarmingly similar to his sidearm. 

The first thing he notes is that the projectile speed is a lot more variable than your standard rifle, this must be part of what makes Clint such a terribly good player, he’s used to that level of variability all the time, though Phil is sure the bow in general is more controllable and consistent. The second thing he notices is that the batteries are standard issue SHIELD electricity packs. SHIELD stopped using the CO2 models a while back because the agents used to get frustrated by their extreme lack of consistency and would first take them apart and remodel them before heading out to the field of play. That is one worry he’d had while studying up, the traditional batteries could make playing the long game difficult. Not a problem anymore though, he smiles quietly while firing off the pistol. He likes the pistol, the ammunition is smaller, but so is the kickback. It’s also quieter.

He finishes off two clips for each, cleans it, cleans his hands, slides his jacket back on and puts the weapons back in their locker. He and Clint have been putting off their planning session until after Phil could at least examine their weapons, if his appearance has somehow put the fear of god into their competitors, Phil isn’t complaining.

It takes two days for the rumors to reach epic proportions. Sitwell comes into his office, eyes sharp and says, “Well so far the most money is on you and Fury being the new Barton and Romanov,” Sitwell waits for Phil to finish laughing patiently. “The other really big bet is that you’ll be released into the wild about five hours in and you’ll be scored on how many of them you can make fill out their paperwork.”

Phil nearly hyperventilates. “You really shouldn’t let Barton make bets like that.”

Sitwell smirks. “Half the fun is seeing how many of them fall for it.”

Clint and Phil debate about snagging the high powered rifle, Clint is forbidden from taking any sniper gear and Natasha, a remarkable shot, is not actually a trained sniper. Phil on the other hand, while having never been through Sniper School, has spent a good deal of time behind a scope. In the end, they decide to forgo it in favor of more traditional and versatile weapons.

The armory is set up with four colors, Red, Blue, Yellow and… Lilac. Phil tries to call it purple, but it just isn’t. The number is obvious a point of contention in the ranks. Without the team of Clint and Natasha, there should only be three colors, Red Team, Blue Team and NPC whose only job is to lay traps, human and otherwise. So when Phil and Clint stroll up to the counter, both dressed in standard tack pants, t-shirts and standard tack vests, all withe the modified holders for the special clips of ammo a silence descends.

Somewhere far off, there’s a whisper. “Oh god, he’s wearing combat boots.” Phil just continues to count off clips.

Long ago, any team Clint is on is automatically named Oh shit, duck for cover, Phil swallows his amusement when Sitwell calmly walks up, grabs a marker and crosses off the last three words and writer on top we’re fucked. There’s a small contingent of agents who look confused, they’re either new or have had citations for behavioral problems relating to arrogance and ego. Some just haven’t spent all that much time with Phil in the field and are skeptical about almost any reputation that the gossip mill doles out. It’s a reasonable response, but one that should be tempered with a bit of salt. There is sometimes a lot of truth in rumors.

Fury, the judge, who sometimes awards points for style, or rather, will often deduct style points from Clint just because he can, steps up front and everyone shuts up.

“Listen up. Your best bet is to team up until those two assholes” Fury points to the two of them with what could almost be called glee, “are covered in paint, but not enough of you ever believe me or think it’s fun to see how long you’d live if the dynamic duo ever defected in what is essentially a nonviolent situation. To those people I say, your appointments with psych have already been made.”

Sitwell gives a jaunty wave. There’s a nervous laugh from the level threes on down. The truth is Fury deliberately splits up the people who have the knowledge to know when to just give up between the three shifts at the paint ball range. The only people who go to more than one shift are the judges, the NPCs and Clint’s team. Fury likes to be efficient when decimating the egos of his underlings.

“Agent Barton, Agent Coulson,” Fury addresses them and Phil can see the man is salivating for this to begin, “you can either have full run of the area of engagement, but only if your feet never touch the ground, or you can have a 40% reduction in combat areas.”

They take the reduction in area, Phil isn’t an acrobat or a fake ballet dancer, they could do it, but their skill sets mesh better if they can touch the ground. Because they’re SHIELD, the area of engagement is miles of acreage, he lets Clint negotiate the reductions because he’s better at reading a terrain map and judging possible nest areas.

Phil is mingling quietly while the last of the prep work is underway, mostly so he can overhear burgeoning plans because some people are just tactical idiots apparently. Also the level of underestimation of him in one corner is reaching downright insulting proportions.

“…so is it a pity team thing or punishment?”

Yeah that one’s getting stuck upside down in his underwear.

When the bell sounds, everyone gets fifteen minutes to scatter, Phil lets Clint lead them to a defensible location. While Phil has no wish to lead an assault from the treetops, he has no problem planning one from there. The tree Clint climbs is a gorgeous thing, easily several feet in diameter and still thick with foliage even where the branches are closer to logs than twigs.

He’s barely settled before Clint pushes up into his personal space and kisses him hotly. “Sorry, sorry, you just look,” he indulges in one more before retreating.

Phil feels a little blitzkrieged and flustered but it’s not an op so much as a chance to have fun so he captures Clint’s hand in his and kisses his knuckles. “I remember tackling you the day you modeled your new Hawkeye uniform.”

Clint pinks up but looks pleased. “Okay then, map.”

Together they plot out the most likely hidey holes and every so often Clint will put a small X in a spot whose tree tops are moving just a little too much.

If asked, Phil would have said he thought that cuddling while plotting would be distracting, it is, but only in really good ways. It helps that they’re both so well trained in quiet that they barely even need to talk, or to move, in order to communicate.

They wait an hour to thin the herds. The aggressive ones tend to act sooner rather than later and the first quarter to third culled happens pretty quickly. Next they spend some time setting trip wires and mapping out the NPC traps. Usually setting one close to the other.

Their first kills come from someone finding one trap and relaxing. In fact, they retrap areas that look like a paint bucket exploded, they’ll catch a handful who assume the traps are already sprung. Though they don’t waste too many paint grenades on the retraps, they just shoot them while they gain their bearings, hanging upside down is usually good for a few seconds of confusion. Rope, by the way, is Phil’s favorite secret weapon.

Even though they have a full 60% of the terrain at their disposal, they stay in their small corner until they’ve exploited every weakness they can.

They both feel it wouldn’t be within the spirit of the thing if they didn’t get down and actively participate, but getting the field down to 30 or 40 people rather than 125 is preferable. So they start their systematic check of all hidey holes. 

Mr. Pity Detail gets shot in the ass. 

His best friend gives it his all but Clint back flips, yes, back flips out of the way and Phil nails him while he jibbers in confusion.

There’s a hair raising moment when they realize that Melinda May is in this round and they completely forgot to account for her but they manage to keep her moving enough that she loses just enough situational awareness to back into one of the traps. Truthfully, that only works because Hill is deliberately scheduled for a separate shift and May has a soft spot for the newbies so by this time in the game, she’s usually alone.

By the time they shoot the last player out there and the whistle blows, well more like a high pitched horn over a very large and complex PA system, they’re both smiling a little manically. Phil giggles a little when Clint pins him to the nearest tree and kisses the life out of him as soon as the last player limps out of range, the adrenaline high is amazing and Phil is only happy to return it. They tamp down some of the excessive displays as they come in closer to the rest of camp.

Phil’s personal life is still eyes only and Clint has had recurring nightmares about him being kidnapped since before they ever kissed so they’re pretty low key around SHIELD. Still though, they kicked ass.

Fury stands up in front again. “The final dead signal was picked up at 6 hours 42 minutes.” He points an accusing finger into the crowd, “Some of you people owe me money.”

Several agents go pasty white under their multicolored splotches when they realize Fury is the one who bet under the name Captain Kangaroo.

Two weeks later, after the third and final round, Clint and Phil are declared the ultimate winners, Tony Stark is kidnapped and without knowing it, the world begins to change.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've updated the tags a little and I'm still debating a few more additions. This story definitely takes elements from Agents of Shield but it also goes AU before it. This story allows for Thor, Captain America, IronMan, IronMan2 and Avengers but goes AU before Ironman3 (but mentions a generic plot point that's also all over comics canon), thor2 and captain america 2.

It’s apparent from the start that Pepper Potts needs generic government Agent Coulson and so he starts carrying around one of his older jackets, the ones that are large enough to hide the bulge of a gun but aren’t specially tailored for it so they all look a little ill fitting. It’s his ‘see how I am an underpaid G-Man?’ disguise and despite the fact that it’s only his jacket and tie that have returned to his old patterns he still feels all tangled up when there’s a chance to breath. Stane gives him a bad feeling from the start, Phil can read the insincere gratitude from miles away.

Still, no one is prepared for quite how quickly and how pear shaped it all goes. Phil loses an agent in that mess and it’s difficult to compartmentalize it. It seems like they’ve just put it all to bed, though really? ‘I am IronMan’ God Stark is a pain in his ass, when it all blows up again.

Instead of settling down like a madman with a new mission, Stark goes nuclear and it’s Clint who points out the signs of someone living their end of the world. After that it’s a little heartbreaking, even when it’s really annoying, which is why Phil doesn’t actually tase him, just threaten to.

Then New Mexico goes nova and Phil runs a little short on sleep for a bit, Nick does him the favor of calling in Clint, though in recent days Nick is far, far away and only Fury makes appearances. There’s a lingering taste in the back of his throat that Clint’s assignment isn’t about Phil’s well being but about his efficiency in the field. 

The bag of flour incident is possibly to blame for it getting back to Fury in the first place. He’s only a little embarrassed about it. Mostly. At least Clint brings a few changes of clothes with him. Phil has come to loathe that older suit.

 

Natasha’s got Stark handled so Phil only goes back to say goodbye, just in case. No one will admit it, but Phil can see the diamond deep, deep down. Pepper’s promotion is one of the smartest moves he’s seen in a long time, even if it’ll take her a few verbal smackdowns of the VPs to gain full control.

It’s not for a few more weeks that Phil really gets to think about New Mexico. Aliens! God-like Aliens! It’s a big world and it only takes ten minutes of wonder for the worry to set in.

Then he’s on Brooklyn clean up for Dr. Banner and Clint nearly decks the General still hanging around because Phil can’t. Phil’s criticism of General Ross stays as a quiet disregard for any preference the man seems to express. The non dairy creamer disappears around day two. Phil figures it’s probably healthier for everyone anyway, that stuff is basically plastic anyway.

A year after Stark becomes IronMan, Captain America’s plane is found. Fury assigns the Captain to Phil and then hustles away the tesserract like a kid on Christmas. There’s a permeating greed about it that makes Phil uneasy.

Phil can’t bring himself to actually stick around for Steve Rogers to wake up. He doesn’t actually want to meet the man and he admits to Clint one night they both can’t sleep that he’s not sure if he actually admires the man or if he’s spent so long pretending to, his body is having some sort of heroic phantom limb syndrome. Phil still clings to the fact Captain America carried a gun and some small part of him hopes he will again, they need more men who know the right and wrong times to pull that trigger. 

He spends a lot of time watching Rogers sleep and comes out of it without an answer.

Their dual assignment to Pegasus pings all of Phil’s instincts. Fury is further away from him than ever and this time he’s sure his assignment is about shoring up Clint’s operational standards. It’s unnerving the amount of energy Fury is devoting to this project and Phil can feel the tension in the air mounting.

 

And then…

And then.

“Barton’s been compromised.” Natasha comes in.

“She moved to Portland.” Because it seems important that Phil starts actively working on his plan again, the one that got derailed by this year of terrible and amazing things and rolling back the fake relationships is next on the agenda.

“I watched you sleep.” His focus is shit and that’s dangerous, he babbles at Captain America because he can’t stop thinking about Clint.

And then.

And then.

It doesn’t hurt at first, for a split second, before his nerves can catch up, it doesn’t hurt, but he knows it should, knows what’s happened before he can see or feel it because he can read Loki’s eyes in that moment.

And then.

And then.

Fury is Nick for a precious few seconds and he wants his last wish to count so he doesn’t ask for Clint, for promises about compromised agents, he asks for a team, he asks for heroes even if he’s not sure he believes in them, he asks for his dumbass idiot move to count in some way.

And then.

Then.

…white.

**CLINT’S INTERLUDE**

 

Clint eats the shwarma because he’s expended too many calories in the last few days and Loki’s mind control cared little about the health of your body, it could sustain you all on its own. So he eats because he knows he needs to in order to make the recovery go a little faster and be a little less painful. 

He wants his bed in Queens so much he can taste it, but he needs to report to SHIELD HQ first, all the non relevant projects were bumped down to ground level when they brought in Loki, he had checked, and he’s sure most of the rest will be sent down there as well. The carrier will need to be docked for repairs, but first it has to land and even with Stark overseeing the emergency repairs, that could get tricky, so they’ll dump a lot of weight and people first.

He doesn’t notice Cap pull out the stiff, red soaked cards, but he sees Natasha collect one for herself, then Stark takes one and Thor and then Cap offers him one. “I know you worked with him, right?”

Something cold and nauseating prickles down his spine. “Who?”

Natasha’s hand settles on his shoulder and he knows what they’re going to say, so he shoves himself away from the table and takes himself outside.

When he can get his head around it, he stops.

The cards.

He stomps back in and grabs the one left on the table and examines it carefully. Then makes grabbing motions at Natasha and Thor and Stark and Cap and examines theirs too. Then he closes his eyes and thinks really hard. His brain is pretty scrambled and there’s probably a minor concussion making some of his short term memory hard to access but he thinks very, very hard.

“These aren’t his.” He finally says.

“What?” Stark asks.

Clint throws the cards on the table. “He didn’t have them on him, I remember, we talked about—” He cuts off for a second, rearranging his words. “He stopped carrying the one in his pocket and the rest, they’re at his apartment. They weren’t even on the carrier.”

Natasha drags him to face her and she asks her question in gestures. “He was having,” Clint pauses trying to figure out how to explain that the biggest part of the fanaticism isn’t Phil at all and that the small parts might be slowly peeling away, “a crisis of faith.”

“At the apartment?” Natasha asks. Clint nods and then nods again. She’s already on her way, she’ll be able to check for a disturbance better than he will. Clint on the other hand, is going to find Fury.

Stark comes up to him next. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ll bet it all leads back to Fury being a lying liar who lies.”

Cap looks like he wishes Stark had phrased it differently but nods in agreement. Bruce just looks exhausted, but ready to go.

“Your leaders are a lot more like Asgard’s than I would have thought,” Thor says quietly, “or we are a lot more like you, it is hard to know.”

Bruce just blinks tiredly but a knowing look is sitting on his face.

“Right, let’s go knock on some doors.” Clint promises his body rest soon, but there’s one more mission parameter to fulfill first.

Turns out, when Tony Stark wants a helicopter now, he gets a helicopter, now. There’s some confusion about permissions to land but Cap just gets on the horn and good ‘ol boys them down. Clint will admire the technique later. Hill tries to stop them and makes vague notions about WSC interviews and how Fury is damn busy and Clint just leans in and hisses in her ear, “You know damn well those weren’t his cards and if I have to get Thor here to sit on you, I will. Be glad I am too damn tired to try anything complicated.”

Hill actually goes white and sad but steps aside without comment.

Fury glares at them when they barge in and Clint lets Stark do the talking because Fury will start speaking just to shut him up.

“They were my cards.” He admits. “Phil asked me to make sure it happened, so I made sure.”

“I want to see his body.” Clint demands. “I need to see his body.”

Fury sighs and slumps. “You can’t. Not yet. He was stabbed with the scepter, we need to make sure there’s nothing left of that.”

Clint’s knees buckle and someone catches him. Dimly he can hear Fury telling someone to get him out of there before someone on the WSC tries something stupid like blaming Clint.

Stark takes him, all of them, in. The medical levels of the tower are mostly undamaged and the doctors and nurses are happy to take care of them. Natasha catches up with them at some point, someone must have told her because she climbs into his hospital bed and lets him cry all over her shoulder. Then he passes out for a really long time.

The little gathering to send Loki back is the most energy he expends in a week, though he is surprised that the tesseract is going with them. When it’s done Stark reiterates the offers of always having a spare room and Clint tells him not to cancel his security clearance with JARVIS. 

Natasha enables him for another week by getting his, their, mail and gathering up some essentials from his, their, apartment. Then one day she sits down opposite him and slides a slim manila envelope over to him. “They finally tracked me down and asked me to send this to you.”

Clint opens it and stares at the single sheet of paper. A parole hearing. Jesus. He can’t, it’s like a punch to the face it hurts so much to stare at it, so he puts it away, but knows that if he burns it like he wants, he’ll regret it later. He thinks instead, maybe he’ll make the pilgrimage on his own and offer up Michael Sullivan’s last words, it seems like the sort of tribute Phil would appreciate. 

Twelve weeks post space portal and someone texts him his own jail code. Back when he and Phil were Agent Barton and Agent Coulson, there had been a conversation about the valueless nature of Clint as an asset. Coulson gave him a look and very quietly told him that if whoever convinced him of that actually worked at SHIELD they would soon be needing to find another job and probably some false teeth.

Agent Coulson explained about the get out of jail free code. No matter what, where, when or why, if Clint needed an extraction, he would get one. He asked Clint not to test it out more than once, while Coulson would always come for him, crying wolf would get him locked out of the range and a very long escort duty with the most annoying asset he could find. 

The code had gone a long way to convincing Clint that Coulson, if no one else, was worth working with and for.

Only Phil knew that particular code.

Only Phil.

Only. Phil.

“Natasha!” He runs to her temporary room in Stark tower. “Natasha! Do you know my jail code?”

Natasha appears in a towel, with damp hair and a scowl. “Of course I know it.”

He hands her his phone. “Was that you?”

She stares at it for a long time and then tosses it back to him. “Get Stark while I get dressed. We’ll meet in his lab.”

They share a manic grin and separate.

*****

Phil’s first coherent thoughts, not the half coherent ones that are all about pain and fear and confusion and a desperate need to make it all end, but the first one where he realizes he survived are of embarrassment. He monologued. He had monologued and like any idiot who makes a speech to a dangerous man, it stabs him in the back.

He monologued. Clint is never going to let him live it down.

Clint. Clint!

His elevated heart rate brings the nurses, they check his vitals with practiced ease and Phil submits to the questions with more grace than he feels but eventually he gets impatient. 

“Agent Barton?” 

More than the fact that Clint isn’t there, the lack of name recognition in the people surrounding the bed worries him, it means Clint isn’t outside of his room making a nuisance of himself. She scans his chart for any notes and then smiles suddenly. “Both Agents Barton and Romanov are fine.”

SHIELD medical has learned that confirming dead/alive status is incredibly important to the peace of mind of some patients, so there’s a form for it now. Agent Coulson will always want to know about his personal assets, Barton and Romanov, and anyone else who was on his direct team in the op he is injured during.

The doctor whisks in before he can ask anything else and the full exam exhausts him, when the doctor shows him the pain button and deliberately presses before handing it over to Phil with a knowing look, it only takes moments for him to pass back out.

There’s a lot of cloudy time, interspersed with a few moments of clarity and contemplation. There’s no indication of the passage of time within his reach and all of the monitors are placed so that he needs to twist and turn the parts of his body that barely tolerate sitting still. They take him away for surgery and he manages to get the doctor to admit it’s the third one, probably because the injection of the milky white fluid that’s always signaled general anesthetic to Phil happens before they even wheel him out of the room and the doctor thinks he won’t remember.

The surgery does mark a new period of recovery, one where he finds himself awake just long enough to be bored. The nurse he remembers from when he first woke up sets up a tablet stand on his right side. It’s the most brilliant thing Phil has ever seen. The bottom is weighted so gentle touches don’t overbalance it and the neck leading up to the arms that hold the starktab in place is flexible and easily maneuverable. The whole thing lines up with a set of speakers and power plug so Phil can hear what he wants to over the sounds of his own room.

It takes him two days to give up on reading the news, he can’t concentrate on the words just yet and the articles themselves seem strangely edited. So he skips to streaming video and loads up anything that looks good and entertains in 20 minute chunks. At least now though, he can tell what time it is.

He finds himself reaching for more complex plots about a day before Fury visits. Phil is fairly sure that’s on purpose. The look Fury sports as he skulks into his room immediate gets his back up.

Their conversation is tense. It falls just short of an argument only through judicious deep breathing on Phil’s part because he doesn’t know when Fury will visit again and he needs to get as much intel out of him as possible.

Over and over again it comes down to Fury needing allies against the WSC and how he thinks Phil is in the perfect place to be his secret weapon. In general, Phil isn’t adverse to this idea, but there’s something alarming in Fury’s eyes that makes Phil nervous. The pain and the meds make it harder to suss out all the details.

Fury tells him about having his own team, not like before, something more mobile and outside of the current command structure. Like a terrorist cell. Phil finds that hilarious. His team’s primary mission would officially be to find and stop problems before they become Avenger sized. Fury’s thinking about making 6 or 8 of them to help hide Phil in the paperwork. In reality Phil’s team will be primarily tasked with making sure the WSC can’t arbitrarily take out a major metropolitan city without at least the idea of checks and balances.

Phil finds the idea not too terrible, only he knows the chances of getting Clint or Natasha, let alone both, on his team are minimal at best. He asks anyway.

Fury sighs sympathetically,“Barton and Romanov are Avengers now,” he says and that’s answer enough. “Barton is officially on leave, unofficially his clearance is down a grade, I know I know” Fury speaks over his objections, “it’s just temporary, but Romanov is with him in solidarity.”

“And unofficially is his security detail.” Phil adds. “Do they realize how ironic that is?”

Fury gives him a small smile. “It may have been pointed out, yes.” 

“So. No visits.” Phil deflates a little, feeling the aches settle deeper into his bones.

“Not for a while,” Fury agrees. “I can send them a message if you like. Might take a while.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to say ‘I miss you’ and ‘I love you’ and ‘Clint, oh Clint thank god’ but he simply cannot imagine saying those words to a piece of a paper let alone to Fury’s face. “I’ll think of something and send it along.”

Fury leaves with a rough squeeze of his hand and a gruff good bye. That night Phil’s dreams are uneasy.

Phil is 44 years old and has spent nearly 35 of those years honing his instincts and usually when he gets uneasy the reason why isn’t far behind, but in a hospital bed, recovering from a chest wound and still oddly cut off from anything else, all he has is his uneasy feeling.

So, he makes friends. The doctors are very focused on their jobs, they want to know every stitch of pain and itch of recovery, they want everything that leaves and enters his body measured, tested, quantified and explored. They rarely smile, which is unusual, and keep shooting him worried looks.

If Phil was a paranoid man, he’d think someone had gotten to them. That’s okay, because every please, thank you and if you have the time makes the nurses coo at him and soon he finds extra pillows and fruit cups (the non slimey ones,) and other small amenities. One of them smiles at him and says, “Usually by six weeks you field agents are chaffing at the bit.”

Phil gestures at his chest with a wry grin. “I’ll chaff as soon as I can use the toilet without industrial grade pain killers.”

The orderlies are the real jackpot, they’re used to being ignored, or worse. So Phil takes the time to learn their children’s names or their favorite sport team. Phil has years and years of small talk to fall back on. The orderlies are the ones that tell him about the Avengers.

Apparently they’ve all moved into the tower. Clint wouldn’t move him without asking, their apartment is still standing or someone has forged some insurance paperwork that needs Phil’s signature, or Clint is having a moment of self doubt so huge it dwarfs what Phil had to break through when Clint is first recruited. Unlikely, but possible, no one will tell him what Clint’s recovery has been like.

There are still a multitude of possibilities for Clint moving in, not the least of which is that the papers and SHIELD only have half the story. It’s enough to niggle at him though.

He stares at the blank sheet of paper and the words just choke up before they can reach his extremities, they don’t come when he writes or when he closes his eyes and tries to have a conversation with himself, they don’t come in dreams or nightmares.

Eventually he leaves it to five words.

“The cellist moved to Portland.”

It’s as close to what he’s feeling as he can get.

The time after he folds the paper in half and sends it off with an orderly, on purpose, is anti climactic. There’s nothing left to do but wait and recover. Since he’s been given leave to stand and walk for a certain amount of time per day, he stands, but he doesn’t walk.

There’s a memory from long ago, of an injury he barely remembers getting, but the long months of recovery are seared into his mind. There are katas, slow moving and gentle, little more than shuffling footsteps on a carpeted floor. There is breathing and relaxing and centering himself and focusing on every message his body is sending him.

He feels an urgency, the same urgency from those many years ago, it drives at him each day there’s no contact, it gets him out of bed in the morning and sits him down for each of his carefully prescribed and measured meals and at night it stops him and tells him to get into bed because rest is just as important as everything else. The urgency burns under his skin, restless but also patient and careful. It’s born of a time long ago but not forgotten apparently.

Then Andrew, the youngest orderly comes in looking worried. The off white scrubs sallow his olive toned skin, his hair is always artfully tousled and his dark eyes take in everything with intelligent looks. It takes him half the day to get up the courage but Phil waits until the kid looks ready to explode before carefully turning their faces away from the cameras. “There’s no sound recorded here unless a code is called.”

Andrew blows out a breath and gives Phil a look that says he knew he couldn’t be fooled. “There was an interview.” He starts. “Just some profiles, everyone wants to know who they were and I know full press PR spread when I see it,” Andrew is an orderly because he’s still working on his degree. SHIELD likes to get them early. “They only gave out aliases for some of them, pictures all in shadows, that kind of thing,” he stops, “I thought it was weird, I mean, I don’t know who they were talking about and I obviously don’t know who else it could be, I don’t have that kind of clearance—”

“Andrew,” Phil says carefully, “what are you telling me.”

“Hawkeye said— they asked if he was single and whoever wrote the bio said that he looked— well— sad. It was more poetic, but you know, sad. The bio said that Hawkeye lost someone close in the battle and that he was still in mourning.”

Phil freezes, his entire body locks up for a brief moment. “When was this written?”

“Came out yesterday, a three month anniversary slash look back at what they’re calling The Battle of Manhattan,” Andrew shrugs, “I just— I know your note was addressed to Clint Barton and I know I’m not supposed to know much about him but he got spoken about a lot after the attack.”

Phil closes his eyes, of course he was. Then something filters into his brain. “Wait,” he says carefully, “three months? Did you round up?”

Andrew blinks and shakes his head. “No, the magazine did a spread on the recovery efforts, it’s been 12 weeks.”

Phil tries not to panic. Four weeks ago the nurse had said six weeks. Maybe he was at another facility? Maybe he’d been too unstable to move. Maybe he’s jumping at shadows. Maybe he needs to get out of here before his next scheduled surgery. They only told him about it today and suddenly the very idea of it makes him nauseated.

“It’s not just that,” Andrew is picking up speed now, needing to get it all out as quickly as possible, “But they all talked about someone, the same someone I think. Someone who died to bring them together and there’s not a lot of people who fit that description.”

Phil shakes his head. “No, there aren’t.”

“It seemed silly, I’m not more than a level 1 and scutt work at that until they get together enough of entry level class for agents. They’re pushing hard for it too, I know a lot of people were lost so I thought maybe I was being crazy, but I know you wrote to him and I passed it along but its been weeks and I can see it’s hard on you and it’s a brave new world out there and if Aliens are possible then something like this seems well…” he shifts uncomfortably, “if aliens are real then it’s not too hard to believe that sometimes the good guys do terrible things, right?” Andrew looks worn out, like the words were the only thing holding him up.

Phil stares at him, taking in Andrew’s slumped shoulders and tired eyes, the kid is really worried. “Do you have enough cash for a burner phone?”

Andrew’s eyes widen, but he remains calm and Phil talks him through what to look for and then has him memorize a series of numbers. “Write those down on your lunch break. I’ll tell you more tomorrow.” He pauses and Andrew waits curiously, his entire demeanor calmer now that his big secret is out and someone believes him. “Can you get a look at my chart?”

“Yeah,” Andrew nods absently, “I check every day to make sure there’s no new notes I need to see.”

“Can you check how far back it goes?” 

“I guess, is there something specific I’m looking for?”

Phil bites his lip, unsure even of what it might be. “Just, check my earliest treatment date. Look for transfer orders, see where I was before I came here, there should be notes attached, the transfer procedures they needed to get me here safely.”

Andrew nods and then finishes up his duties before leaving. It takes three days to get all the numbers out. On the last day Phil looks Andrew in the eye and tells him what will happen. “Leave the phone on, they’ll trace it to you within minutes and be there within the hour. Stay where you are, find someplace safe but private and stay there. They’ll probably be hostile at first. Tell them you have a message from Michael Sullivan for Clinton Francis Barton. Tell him the cellist has moved to Portland and then tell him everything you can about this place.”

Phil watches Andrew as he takes it all in and he almost feels bad that this will certainly end his career in SHIELD if it goes down the way Phil thinks it will. He makes a note to make sure the kid is employed elsewhere. He’s smart enough for Pepper Potts to find a place for at least.

To prove his point, Andrew gives him a small smile and looks him in the eyes, “I’m not sure I want to be part of something that thinks this is okay anyway.”

After Andrew leaves for the day Phil situates himself with his tablet, giving his face a full view of the cameras. He has no doubts that JARVIS will come looking as soon as the kid gives them a physical address.

Three hours in his tablet blanks out to a command prompt. Which promptly starts typing.

IS THE CAMERA A LIVE FEED?

Phil both nods and types: YES.

PHIL.

That’s when he knows it’s Clint typing and how he managed to fight the keyboard away from Stark is a question he desperately wants to know. Probably a combination of Natasha and Pepper.It doesn’t matter though because he can hear Clint’s voice in that series of pixels that make up his name. He can hear to worry and fear and all the other things that Clint is trying to say. 

CLINT.

:) TONY SAYS HI.

The happiness burbles up inside him like boiling water, hot and happy. 

I’M WAVING AT THE CAMERA, JUST FOR HIM.

Phil scratches his nose with his middle finger. It’s silly and unnecessary but it feels good to joke, even just a little.

Phil doesn’t know why he thought they were going to extract him quietly, because that’s really not their style. Individually, maybe, most of them have no qualms with quiet operations, but Phil has read enough asset evaluations to know putting them all together is just a recipe for loud.

Still though, it’s just Banner and Clint that enter his room. Clint and Phil have trouble focusing on anything than each other for a few seconds, but they both know if they so much as touch hands, they won’t be able to stop and that’s not a useful at the moment.

“Tony’s got JARVIS snagging your records as we speak,” Banner tells him looking completely at home in the white lab coat. As far as disguises go, it’s the smartest for this, even Clint is wearing one, ”he didn’t want to dig in to that level until we were on our way in case they noticed, but I’m just gonna snag your chart here and take a look at your setup to make sure we’ve got it all covered.”

Phil nods, never so thankful for Stark’s inability to understand the hypocrisy between demanding to keep large swathes of his own files completely private, claiming them to be too dangerous in the wrong hands, while demanding access to everyone else’s. Andrew’s work from that morning mean Phil is dressed in sweats and socks and Clint produces outdoor slippers, the kind people in Vermont might indulge in, with rubber soles and lambswool lining. Banner offers up a sling and Phil lets it be put on without comment. He needs to make it to their car on foot, the wheelchair would be too obvious, so anything that helps support his left side is gratefully accepted.

Clint offers him a cane. No, not a cane, a work of art. It’s sleek, and sturdy and whatever makes up the handle conforms to his palm quickly. “Tony.” Clint explains.

Phil shakes his head. “Tony.” That means it’s probably made of vibranium or something equally ridiculous and might shoot bullets if he’s not careful. If Phil were honest, the gift touches him deeply and fills him with no small amount of glee at finding out all the details.

Banner stops in front of them and does a once over. “Good, we’ll go at your pace, I’ve already spoken to the rest of them about that.” He’s about to open the door when he stops and turns back to Phil, “By the way, it’s nice to meet you,” there’s a lopsided sort of mischievous smile on his face and Phil thinks this guy is pretty amazing considering his life for the last few years.

Clint falls into step beside him and once in the corridor Phil realizes the others aren’t waiting, which is a surprise until they start to appear from around corners as they pass. Slowly forming a diamond shape of protection around Phil. That’s why he doesn’t see Fury in the main atrium at first, but years of covert operations gives Phil preternatural abilities to sense when someone walking in front of him is going to stop abruptly. 

He hears Stark’s tightly spat, “Director,” before everyone finishes moving out of the way.

Fury looks mad, incandescent actually and that’s about all Phil can take, he’s done, full up, annoyed beyond fucking belief. He walks slowly and carefully up to the director, his cane making sharp noises in counterpoint to the light shuffling of his rubber soles. He stops in front of the director and raises an eyebrow, daring him to comment. Fury takes his chance to yell and gets as far as, “Agent Coulson you—”

Phil finds out his cane is exceptionally sturdy and the vibrations from hitting Fury in the kneecap barely shake his hand. “There’s a very good possibility that I quit, Director, depending on the next words out of your mouth.”

Fury glares up at him from the floor. “You quit and Phil Coulson dies.”

The gasps behind him have Phil holding up a hand. “It’s a threat, but not the one you think it is,” he addresses them before answering Fury, “and I thought you couldn’t get any dumber, what the hell happened to you Nick?” Fury tries to stand, Phil braces the cane on his chest and shakes his head. “No. I don’t think so. You can stay there, I’m less likely to kneecap you again.”

“I needed you to agree to take the assignment.” 

Phil wishes he had a free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “This is what happens when you have to be in control of everything, you become a dumbass. I have no idea what got you to this point but you stopped trusting people you had no reason to stop trusting and while you are exceptional at your job, you cannot possibly do it all alone.”

“What worries me,” Stark says from behind them, “is what he was going to do to keep you away from Barton and Romanov, not sure why that one is particularly important but based on the information I’m getting, it was about them more than anyone else.” Stark is directly in Phil’s line of sight. “See, Agent, we thought you were dead, so we didn’t go look, but you knew we, or rather, they were alive, so what exactly was the Director,” again the word is spit out, “going to do to keep you away.”

Fury’s guilty look away, quick, but caught, brings bile to Phil’s throat and that looming surgery that he’ll no longer be around for gives him disturbing shivers. There’s only a few things that would do it, make him leave it alone without even trying and they’re all too horrifying to contemplate so Phil does the only thing he can, he walks away. “Put me on indefinite leave, I’ll let you know what I decide. Director.” The last word stings, it feels like the ashes of a long friendship long cold and he was just too dull to see it go.

As soon as Clint tucks him into the front seat of the car Phil feels overcome with exhaustion, it’s not from the physical exertion, he’s walked further and done more strenuous exercise, but the emotional toll of the last 48 hours is great. He feels hollowed out and deadened and just wants to curl up with Clint someplace safe and private.

He doesn’t even hate the sight of the wheelchair that greets them in the Stark Tower garage and as soon as he sits in it he knows it’s another Tony Stark special, whatever material the seat is made of it must be the same as the handle on his cane because it’s amazing and quite frankly the best thing to touch his ass since Clint Barton’s hands.

They escort him to a deluxe medical suit where Stark mutters something about how Pepper had insisted on it considering how often she would walk in to find Dummy performing surgery on him. Phil smirks and thinks that it was more to do with the fact that most of the current theories about the arc reactor involve thinking it supports part of the chest wall. Tony is a man full of a unique medical needs.

The Avengers all give him their individual good byes, Captain Rogers is stilted but sincere, Natasha’s is the softest hug he’s ever received, Pepper who has appeared in the interim with wet eyes clutches his hand tightly and tells him they’ll speak later and Tony says a lot of words, most of them meaningless but his stare is knowing. They share more than surgery scars, he knows betrayal deeply and he knows Phil is still reeling. 

Bruce stays long enough to give the medical hand off to the doctor and then leaves silently. Clint sits down next to the bed, on his right side, between him and the door, and manages the curl up into himself so that he can’t reach out until they’re both ready.

This new doctor, “Call me Doc Bloc” is positively emotional compared to his last ones and it’s actually a nice change. She lifts a questioning eyebrow at Clint and Phil’s words fail him when he tries to describe Clint’s presence so he just reaches out and tangles their fingers together. Clint clings tightly, body tense from holding back his true impulse which is probably to crawl into the bed with him.

The doctor just smiles and nods and takes them through the intake exam and then talks about the recovery timeline, most of which isn’t new to Phil but when she says, “You’re doing pretty good for 12 weeks in, SHIELD has a treasure trove of medical know how that the general public doesn’t have access to so I’m going to need to study your file carefully,” Phil freezes.

Clint goes still with him, instinctively following Phil’s lead. “What?” He asks and that catches Doc Bloc’s attention.

“It might be nothing,” Phil prevaricates, “I spent a lot of time in a haze and longer on very strong drugs…”

“But?” Clint prods him.

“But one of the nurses said I was doing well for six weeks.” He looks at Clint and finds his own anxiety mirrored. “That was four weeks ago.”

Doc Bloc slows her reading of his file and then flips back to the first page. “Maybe it took you a while to be stabilized? Were you transfered?”

“I don’t know,” Phil says quietly and Clint’s hand squeezes his tightly, “it could be nothing, except they spent a lot of time and energy keeping exact date from me.” He thinks back to that time, they gave him days of the week but even talks of the weather had been generic and vague. “Normally I’d say it’s nothing, but considering what we just foiled today, it seems prudent to look into it.”

Doc Bloc’s face has lost its casual smile and she’s writing down notes as fast as she can in a messy scrawl across a fresh notebook page. “We should talk about this more later, but you look exhausted so let’s get the intake done and you into a bed, okay?”

Phil and Clint nod eagerly.

Doc Bloc resumes her original talk and moves onto the options for therapies and what to expect out of his body and when, with caveats of course for whatever they might discover. Phil takes the time to explain what he’s been doing for his own body, Clint looks terribly interested about some of those beginning katas, he knows Phil is technically a black belt but this is still new information for him. He then explains what he hopes to achieve and his questions about when he can expect the green light for various levels of physical activity.

Clint coughs at that and Phil pretends to ignore him, he’s mostly talking about other things. Mostly.

What surprises him is that they don’t need Phil to stay in the hospital suite. Stark has wireless monitors that Jarvis records the data from and puts directly into his electronic chart. There’s a brief conversation about right to privacy but JARVIS assures him that Sir has no access to these files and never will unless the emergency is very, very specific. Good enough in Phil’s book because now that the possibility of curling up privately with Clint is real, he’s not picky on the details. 

Four sensors, small, round and the size of half dollars are attached on each side of his body. They’re waterproof and need replacing about once a week. Approximately how often he needs a checkup since the doctor can do much of the work based off the sensor feeds. 

They leave with a bagful of meds and sheets of instructions. “You’re familiar with most of these, call if you have questions, both I and Dr. Jiminez live on site, technically we run the clinic on the 4th floor but we’re really here for you guys.”

Before he knows it, Clint is wheeling him into a private elevator and then into an apartment with tall ceilings and windows that provide all the daylight anyone can need, an open plan kitchen and dining room and a hallway with several doors that Phil is sure he’ll explore later.

The bedroom is the most lived in area, it has the most Clint hanging about. Some dirty laundry in a basket in the corner, his non shield field gear carefully stowed on the wall over a dresser that probably houses all of the accoutrements. Clint shows him the gun safe next to the bed and the bathroom with huge shower and decadent tub, the escape hatch hidden behind a chest of drawers, the enormous television opposite the bed and The Remote (size of a small touch screen PDA), which handles everything from changing the channel to the room temperature. Apparently there’s an app for starkphones too so you can never really lose the remote and also JARVIS is usually really helpful if needed. 

It’s all very impressive, even to his tired eyes. What’s more impressive is that during the grand tour Clint does not stop taking off their clothes until they are both curled up in bed, Phil propped carefully against a special pillow meant to cradle his over sensitive scar and Clint buries his face into Phil’s good shoulder. “Phil. Oh god, Phil.” It’s shaky and muffled and it makes his heart ache just a little bit more. 

“I’m here,” he whispers into Clint’s hair. “I’m here and we can just spend the next week in bed, to hell with therapy and bathing. Food though, we’ll have to find a way to get food.”

Clint laughs wetly and presses gentle kisses along his neck, jaw and lips until Phil falls asleep, quiet happiness comforting him the whole way down.

They spend 24 hours doing nothing but holding each other and then even Clint admits he needs more than kisses to live a full and productive life. They slide into the rhythm of the tower with ease and Clint brings him proudly to the next group dinner only a day later. It’s chaotic and loud and delicious and joyous. It takes Phil a few minutes to realize they’re celebrating him, he’s why they’re so boisterous and Clint can sense the moment his eyes prickle with emotion because there’s a sock clad foot nudging against him in question. Phil just gives him a small smile.

Naturally, it’s Stark who puts it together. “So Agent, Doc Bloc tells me she let you out on your own recognizance. You shoulda called, there’s a blank guest suite with your name on it, just waiting for your super special secret agenty touch.”

Pepper gives him vaguely annoyed look and points out that Phil probably needs someone nearby for a while. Clint chimes in saying that once you cut a guy’s pants open to deal with a bullet wound, everything is gravy. Rogers mutters something about it being none of his business and all things considered he’s pretty sure Agent Coulson has proven that he can make his wishes known without a problem. Bruce asks someone to pass the dumplings. Natasha asks for the fried rice.

Phil gives Tony the stink eye for fishing and very carefully explains that he doesn’t need to be healthy to aim a taser. Clint follows that up with an anecdote about how Phil doesn’t even need a weapon to hurt Tony. That starts a round of what Melinda, if she were there, likes to call ‘did you hear what Agent Coulson did?’ when the boogyman stories come out in the academy. 

Clint starts it off with the sack of flour because for some reason he really loves that story, probably because he knows Phil was mostly punch drunk when it happened. Also, he gets cranky when you mess with his road trip food. Natasha is next with Clint’s recruitment story and Phil is drunk on happiness at this point and protests his shooting of a potential asset with, “it was just a flesh wound.”

In retaliation Clint tells them, specifically Bruce, about how General Ross seemed to have a series of ‘domestic crisis’ starting with an inability to get good coffee and ending with someone short sheeting his bed.

“I was not a lookout,” Phil protests, “I simply chose an unfortunate place to stop and check my messages.”

Bruce gapes them for a minute and then laughs so hard water spurts out his nose. When he’s done cleaning up he starts on what the post doctorates do in the labs after midnight, that gets Tony going about his postdoctoral work, just about the only stuff that happened anywhere near the legal drinking age. Rogers finally chimes in with a few lesser known howling commandos hijinks, but he looks looser and more carefree than when they first sat down.

Through it all Natasha and Clint intersperse their favorite Agent Coulson stories. Most of which, Phil notes, usually happen when he’s short on everything from sleep to patience. “…so then,” Clint laughs, “Phil gets this look on his face and by then, I know that look so even though I’m all ready to do a standard two man take down, I relax because I know Phil is gonna do something crazy and hilarious. Next thing I know there’s a stake knife sticking out of the wall next to the guy’s head and Phil just says, and he doesn’t even look up from his plate, and he says ‘that was me not trying to hurt you, if you leave now I won’t even give your license plate to the state police.’” Clint is doing a doing his excellent Coulson impression, “And the guy is just about to bravado it out when Phil blandly recites the guy’s plates back to him. Along with the make and model of his car, the type of piece he’s holding, the fact that the safety is on and that Phil deals with scarier things than him before his morning coffee. The guy flees so fast I swear there were tracks. The best part is, he called the guy in anyway.”

They’re all laughing uproariously and Phil can only look mildly shamefaced. “I hadn’t eaten in nearly 20 hours, at that point my fried chicken was more important to me than god.”

After a while all Phil can do is stare at Clint’s gorgeously smiling face and smile back and so he comes to a decision that really, should have been made long ago and he takes Clint’s free left hand in his right and brings it to his lips. Clint spends approximately 2 seconds startled and then smiles even wider than before.

“AH HA! I knew it!” Stark yells triumphantly.

“Shut up Tony.” They say at the same time and really, there’s nothing left to do but kiss Clint on his beautiful, perfect, smart mouth.


	4. Chapter 4

They talk about it later, about what changed and Phil strokes Clint’s cheek and sighs. “The cellist is Agent Coulson’s type,” he explains carefully, “that guy we created 15 some odd years ago, but I’m not that guy anymore, I never really was.”

They’re in bed, in the dark, sleepy and happy. It’s a place and a time that makes talking easier and makes pulling up secrets less painful. “In a lot of ways, I think this is close to who I would have been if there had been half a chance for it. When we created this alias, I went back to my childhood and even into my teens and mined that time for information. My interests and hobbies. It took time but most of them panned out and the ones that didn’t faded away. I like this me.”

Clint’s kisses that night are lingering and Phil misses him desperately despite the fact that he’s right there. It takes some talking but eventually Clint lets Phil pull him into his lap and stick a slick hand down his pants and curl around his half hard cock. It’s a slow hand job full of deep, wet kissing and half sighs and happy gasps and a lot of “oh god that’s so, right there, right there, hrrnn yes, love you.” When Clint comes he’s beautiful and his entire body relaxes into a puddle of satiation as he slides off Phil. When his hand skims Phil’s body Phil is surprised to find he’s physically aroused. 

The material and Doc Bloc had said this was going to happen soon but it’s a shock to feel so hot and needy, have it thrumming through his body. Clint shushes him and makes him promise to let Clint do all the work and then he blazes a trail of sucking kisses down his body until there’s nothing left but to swallow Phil down a deep, wet heaven. It’s one of those times where from the moment it starts it’s perfect, like he’s already climbing up that mountain before Clint even begins and it takes very few minutes for it to go from bliss to pleasure pooling at the bottom of his spine. His orgasm lasts forever, rolling waves of sweet pleasure that Clint just sucks right out of him until finally, high on endorphins, good food and friends, Phil passes out into a deep sleep.

They putter around a lot, unconsciously mimicking their usual post mission patter. Clint cooks something that takes hours to simmer in a slow cooker and makes a list of chores that need doing at the apartment and lists of things that need to be picked up and moved to the tower. They discuss maybe subletting that one as well and Phil’s hands clench around the pile of mail that’s neatly stacked on the kitchen table.

Clint catches him up on the bills, all taken care of thanks to Natasha sitting him down and reminding him that he cares about the things late payments would ruin. They work their way down the stack happily until at last there’s only a blank 8.5 x 11 envelope.

“Oh.” Clint blinks. “I forgot about that when I got your text. I was gonna go anyway, for you. Maybe have Stark do up something to make it look like I was reading your words from a letter or something.”

Phil knows what it is as soon as the top pops out of the envelope. “It’s next week.” 

Clint nods. “If we do it right, you’ll be okay to travel, though you’ll probably not be up for much else.” They both know one of the worst problem with wounds like Phil’s is the enforced inactivity, the body loses a lot of essential energy stores just healing itself, but the combination of the injury and the rest tends to make the stamina levels of a post flu patient look super powered in comparison. Phil is only just moving into the portion of PT where they’re pushing his energy as much as the flexibility of his healing muscle. Clint takes his hand and waits for Phil’s eyes to tear themselves away from the paper in front of him. “We don’t talk about this and I’m not sure exactly what this means to you, but I watched you last time and it was something important.”

Phil nods, eyes drawn back to the paper like a magnet. “It feels silly to feel like I need to prove something to people who don’t know me, can’t ever know me and barely knew me even back then. To want to prove something to myself, but not know what.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not something you should do, that it can’t be important to you.” 

“I’ll talk to Pepper about a plane,” Phil decides, “I bet they’ve got something registered through a shell company we can use. It might be easier on the shoulder to travel on our terms.”

Clint leers, “Oh baby, if I’m driving you won’t feel a thing.”

Phil throws a wad of paper at him.

In the end, they don’t even need to talk to Pepper because Tony already knows. Phil kind of figured that was a possibility when he sent Andrew with a message from Michael Sullivan. Tony wanders down a few hours after Phil ends up on Pepper’s schedule with a serious face and a determined glint. “I know about these things,” Tony says to them, “I know about shit dads and things you can’t let go. The plane is small but cushy and it’s not a guarantee but it’s hidden underneath so much paperwork I’d be surprised if I could prove I owned it.”

Phil takes the stack of paperwork needed for a pilot to take custody of and fly the plane. “The pilot and second passenger will be Clinton Francis Barton.”

Tony’s eyes show he’s not expecting that, but he shrugs and moves on. “Is there anything else you need?”

Phil thinks to his closet full of clothes and how his current batch of comfortable things practically hangs off him, the custom tailored stuff will resemble an especially soft burlap sack. “A suit. A good one,” he finally says, he and Tony have taken a step towards mutual respect but he still finds it hard letting Tony in too far.

“Go to my guy,” He pulls out a business card, “Nothing you own will fit and I’m betting off the rack is not the look you’re going for.”

“Thanks,” Phil takes the card before he realizes the fact that Tony has one on him means he’s found more records than Phil is comfortable with or is really that good at making leaps in logic. Both are possible.

Tony’s almost out the door when Phil calls for him. “The tattoo covers, Stark International did the latest upgrade on them?”

“I’ll send you a year’s supply.” Now he knows he’s both surprised and intrigued Tony and that’s probably going to come back to bite him later. Still though, it’s nice to know he can do this without having to run it through SHIELD. He’s barely a week out of the SHIELD medical facility and anything associated with SHIELD feels like a hot and angry bruise in his mind.

Tony’s guy, Armand, has apparently been warned ahead of time and he asks if this is the friend of Mr. Stark’s who was injured in the Battle of Manhattan. The yes croaks out of his mouth and the voice on the other end of the line says he can come by tonight at 7pm.

Armand is average height, skinny, silver haired, looks ageless but over 50 and manages to be dignified even while measuring an inseam. Something Phil is deeply impressed by.

Because it’s near the end of summer, their clothing choices are limited to linen and soft cottons, which Phil is fine with because even with careful bandaging his scars are unbelievably sensitive to pressure. The new sling Tony devised is a miracle of engineering, but even that needs to be secured perfectly to keep his shoulder happy with the angle and to avoid any pressure from his arm on his chest. Armand asks to see the sling so that he can make sure to tailor around it.

Clint takes Armand aside at one point and has a whispered conversation that makes the tailor’s eyebrows raise but he nods in approval in the end. Clint winks at Phil because he already knows he’s caught but isn’t saying anything just yet. Phil is fine with that, he knows he’ll find out soon enough.

The clothing arrives within days and it’s absolutely perfect, Armand is definitely a genius. Natasha arrives just after with a packet from SHIELD. Phil opens it and finds two fully formed ID packets. “A peace offering?” He asks. Phil and Clint still have their base ID packs, it’s a right of every SHIELD agent to have access to their own identities unless they are irrevocably burned. So this isn’t something they need necessarily, it’s just very convenient.

Natasha shrugs. “Probably.”

“Trackers?”

“None.”

“Huh.” Phil ponders, definitely a peace offering.

The new version of the tattoo covers are really what SHIELD had been hoping for from the start. Something to make not only undercover easier, but clean getaways faster. The new stuff works in minutes not hours, the enzyme in the pills last 24 hours and are usually hidden inside a bottle of multivitamins and the creams inside a chap-stick container or something similar, that plus wet-wipes means nearly instant tattoo or lack thereof. It means that long term undercover agents have a little something extra in their arsenal. A noticeable tattoo in the right place when your description most definitely does not include one can give you a lot of breathing room and vice versa.

When Clint and Phil show up at the hanger, Natasha is already there doing preflight and wearing a smartly tailored captain’s uniform.

“I—”

Natasha gives Phil a smart look, “Like you didn’t know this was going to happen.”

He closes his mouth, fair enough, it’s not a huge surprise, but it does mean a lot to him.

So they board and Natasha follows, entering the cockpit and then firmly closing it behind her showing them she knows exactly what they need. She always does.

The change this time is a little less ritualistic and a little more methodical. This time Phil’s injury requires careful handling and Phil himself is a little closer to Michael Sullivan than last time. It makes the transition a little less rough. They take turns with the cream and then follow it after with a damp washcloth. Clint’s journey across Phil’s collar bone this time is so soft it tickles but he manages to avoid pressing on anything too sensitive. Clint also insists on dressing him, much the same as last time, taking slow and careful steps to smooth and tuck and belt and button. 

In the end Phil looks like someone just in from a vacation from someplace tropical, like Tahiti, even if his pasty complexion belies that experience. The shirt is cream colored, loose and airy and the sleeves are rolled up instead of neatly folded. The excellent tailoring disguises some of his weight and muscle loss, but to his eyes he still looks more like an after image than himself. The sling doesn’t help the feeling of fragility.

Clint’s outfit is a bit more substantial, despite being lighter than Phil’s dark pants, the material itself looks heavier, sturdier. Phil frowns and feels at the vest Clint is shrugging on. “It’s the stuff Stark uses,” he tells Phil, “they weave a fiber into it, not bullet proof, but stronger all around.”

The vest reminds Phil of Clint’s work outfit and as he finishes buttoning up and then wheeling his arms in various directions, Phil realizes why, the cut is nearly the same with the exception of some extra room around the shoulders and the exceptionally tailored V the front forms to meet at the first button. Clint is armoring up because Phil can’t. Again no tie, just a crisp shirt left unbuttoned at the top and pants that make Clint look even more lithe than normal.

Somehow though, he looks dangerous, lethal. Hot. Okay the hot isn’t really a surprise.

As they disembark after landing, Phil grabs his cane and takes a deep breath, trying to settle into Michael Sullivan again. He’s surprised to find Natasha, jacket switched out for something more like a driver’s uniform, waiting for them in front of a sleek black car. He can feel Clint relax as they both climb in back, not having to drive and find parking is one less headache for them both.

At the courthouse security gets a little squinty at the cane but they can’t find a good reason not to let him have it, especially after Clint gives a dry sigh that seems to say ‘god help me with these people’ and tugs gently at Phil’s shirt just enough to show the edge of the bandages. Though they try really hard, especially after they get a look at their IDs.

Like last time, they slide into the back unnoticed until they are called for. Only this time Clint helps him stand and their audience is filled with eyes that are more than curious, but hungry for information. 

“Michael Sullivan,” he says. “I was,” he confirms. “No, nothing.” He finishes.

The man chained in the center flinches, Phil ignores him.

When it’s done they try to slip back out, but just like last time, they have visitors waiting.

Callahan and Holtz find them first, they both look wilted like the industrial air conditioner just can’t keep them cool, then again their outfits are probably more artificial than natural blends. Callahan points an angry finger at them. “You left town!”

It’s still hilarious, but Phil only has a quiet chuckle in him this time. “You had no reason or documentation to hold us within state lines. Also, I had an appointment.” He notes that unlike last time, Clint immediately steps up to cover his flank, his left one. “As much fun as this is, once again, I have an appointment, if you’ll excuse us?”

They turn to walk away and Callahan snorts, “Why am I not surprised someone stabbed you in the back?”

Both Phil and Clint freeze and one look down tells him the ugly fluorescent lighting has made his shirt somewhat see through. As one, they turn back and Phil can see their syncronicity disturbs both policemen but their looks of contempt are still well situated on their faces and Phil’s limit for this is at an all time low. “I wasn’t just stabbed in the back,” Phil’s voice has gone deep and quiet, but it still carries, “I was skewered.” Beside him Clint swallows a noise, but it’s his only tell, he’s taking measured steps towards them with Clint matching his pace easily. These people who are so petty that a teenager’s antics decades ago still dictate their actions have filled Phil to the absolute limit. “I was an insect for all the threat I was and still my body was ripped apart for it and he laughed as I fell to the floor, but you know what happened then?” He pauses to catch his breath. “I blew him out of the sky.”

Callahan’s face has gone slack with fear until with a gust of breath he smiles nastily at Phil. “Was that a confession?”

For all the things people have said to him, of all the tense situations Phil has walked into and talked people down with words and body language, this one is probably the most absurd. “Sure, let’s see you try to prosecute.”

Holtz, who has until this point, remained silent snorts his disbelief. “Your suit costs what? A couple grand? Someone with that much cushion doesn’t know the meaning of pain. I bet you got nothing but an extra large scratch under there.”

“Okay,” Clint interrupts, stepping firmly between Phil and his antagonists, Phil is grateful because he’s already so tired, “Now I have _got_ to ask what your precinct solve rates are, because with cunning deductions like those, the numbers have must be amazing.” Clint stretches his pronouncement with a healthy dose of understated sarcasm that Phil isn’t sure he’s ever displayed himself but Clint does seem firmly in character so what does he know?

“Like it can’t be a coincidence that there’s another Family murder the night you two come into town?” Holtz is doing a cat with the canary impression.

Phil, on the other hand, smiles beatifically and sing songs, “Someone didn’t do their homework.”

Clint also has shark like smile on now, “We landed about two hours ago.” He nods at them both and then turns to Phil, “I think it’s time to leave.”

They leave what is probably going to be a monumental explosion of mediocre police procedure and head outside. Clint frowns at his phone as they slowly make their way down the outside stairs. “Nat says there’s a traffic snarl, we should start walking west and she’ll catch up with us eventually.”

Phil nods, takes a glance at the sky and the time and turns left. Clint follows him briskly but pulls them over to a sidewalk food stand. “Hold on, I saw that wince.” He pays for a cold bottle of water and shakes out a fresh pill. “Pain killer. It’s been a long day.”

Phil takes it without a word and that gets Clint’s attention more than anything else.

“We can find a spot to sit down, Nat won’t mind,” Clint says in a quiet voice his body shifting to a more protective stance.

“I’d rather get away from here,” Phil lets the back of his fingers run over the buttons of Clint’s vest, “this whole place is tiring and I’m worried my Uncle hasn’t been seen yet.”

Clint nods and they start to thread their way through the lunch hour waves of people. The heat makes everyone look extra determined, all they want is to reach some industrially cooled destination and have a little peace of mind while munching on whatever overpriced fair is available this far into the center of the city. Clint’s phone buzzes as they cross the street away from the throngs of civil servants and he grunts in annoyance at the message. “Natasha says a garbage truck hit a pole and the police are just getting there.”

Something prickles at the back of Phil’s skull and a shadow catches at the corner of his eye. He keeps his gaze steady but his head tilts in Clint’s direction. “Can she see the truck? Does it look like a city vehicle or is there a company name on it?”

Next to him Clint pauses imperceptibly before texting the question. “The suits,” he murmurs, “are getting better tailored.”

Phil nods, catching a handful of men whose clothes are suspiciously expensive without screaming lawyer. “My Uncle wants a talk. They were waiting for us.”

“I saw their eyes during the hearing too.” Clint pops the bottom three buttons of his vest, still staring at the phone, waiting for Natasha’s answer. Except Phil knows his traveling companion, he’s probably also already scoped out all of the roof tops, alley ways and double parkers nearby. His phone buzzes. “Shit. Private company.”

“Take the cane if you need it, it’s a titanium core with a vibranium paint job. Tony said in a pinch it can hold a car up to change a tire.” Phil’s palms are sweaty, he hasn’t been sleeping well enough for this. The nightmares have gone technicolor and sharp instead of dark and far away.

“Nah,” Clint unbuttons his shirt cuff and reveals leather sheaf with a plastic looking knife. “Poly carbonate. Tony’s afraid to patent it in the public domain after 9/11 but he’s made Tasha and I some toys to try out.” He guides them to an open courtyard with benches and umbrellas in the middle of the next block. Clint moves Phil into such a specific position that Phil pretty much assumes at least he is mostly under cover for the most common sniper shots.

Phil sips his water and they wait, making whoever it is, come to them.

They know he’s there before he says a word, really, these people aren’t ones for subtlety. So Phil decides to give them a lesson in it. “The truck was overkill.”

The shadow off to their left jumps and they share a quirk of satisfied lips.

The shadow reveals itself to be not his Uncle but Carmine Caspiche, Double C, Head of the Five Families and ruler with an iron fist and occasionally bloody smile. Even Clint recognizes him, Double C made it to SHIELD’s list of international worries several years ago. 

Carmine circles them, hands in his excellently tailored pants pockets. His double breasted, Italian, pinstripe suit jacket is closed and he’s barely perspiring. His car is somewhere nearby then. He also wears the relaxed demeanor of someone who knows his reputation is more than enough to hold him safe in the middle of a war zone. “They told me, you know, about last time.”

Phil makes a show of considering this piece of information carefully. “I’m really not that interesting a guy.”

“Anyone who can disappear as well as you can,” Carmine says slowly, “is interesting. Especially to me.”

There’s a sneaking suspicion crawling along Phil’s spine that they’re about to get the hard sell, following that sensation is the heavy fatigue that has been plaguing him these days. There’s two drugs in his file that have coded names and Doc Bloc has yet to figure out what they were for. His recovery arc has slowly altered in the week without those drugs, he’s still fine and not in danger of falling to pieces, just healing slower than previously. The heat, all of it, from the bright summer day to the intensity of the conversations he’s forced to participate in, is starting to weigh him down and sapping his strength quicker than he expects. “Oh?”

“I’ve learned a few hard lessons to get where I am today,” Carmine begins, like he’s telling a story, “I’m not even a handful of years older than you, we came into the family business around the same time. For a while, you were set up as my rival.”

That shiver down his spine gets bigger and next to him, Clint’s legs go tense, readying to spring into action. “I,” Phil grimaces, “I knew that.”

“Is that why you left?” Carmine fiddles with his pinky ring. It’s obviously the oldest one on his hand, careworn and smooth.

“I left,” Phil starts carefully, “because I didn’t want to die alone in a gutter, the remnants of a bad bust that was the result of a poorly planned job. Or worse, a set up because someone decided they didn’t like that I was usually the smartest person in the room and as an adolescent, I didn’t know when and how to hide it yet.” Phil sips his water and sees the minute tremors in its surface that show his hands are shaking. “I left because I was tired of being afraid of people who should have done nothing but love me.” His voice has risen, he doesn’t remember that. The courtyard is spinning a little too. He shouldn’t of come, he’s not well enough yet.

Carmine looks unimpressed.

“Your entire world makes me sick,” Phil spits out.

Carmine spins his ring in the other direction and the world slows.

Phil shoves his cane straight back and up and keeps going, despite the painful pulling the action puts on his chest, until the faint sound of ribs crackling hits his ears. At the same time Clint bursts into action, diving backwards and twisting neatly to take out the closest guy at the knees, he too is going for damage to incapacitate, Phil is surprised he can hear the knee pop out of place over the guy’s screaming, but he doesn’t stop to appreciate Clint’s technique, there’s two more guys coming their way. They both go for him, either they see Phil as the weak link, or they’re under orders.

Still though, they’re pretty overconfident and Phil has no trouble getting his cane between the legs of thug #3 and flicking upwards. His strength is already waning and they need to get all four of these guys incapacitated before he falls down himself. Clint is already at thug #4 and ouch, that was an elbow going out.

Cracked ribs decides that now it’s a good time to take out a gun but Clint’s knife pins the arm to to the ground at the wrist. Cane to the groin guy lunges at Clint but only succeeds in ripping Clint’s sleeve before being put back into the ground with a firm yank and flip. 

“Stop!” Carmine yells and Phil turns to see Natasha has stowed the car somewhere and joined them with a gun to Carmine’s head. Phil will never mock Clint’s ability to text while blindfolded, or hanging upside down from the rafters, ever again.

They all freeze but Phil lets his body relax into a more natural resting position, leaning a little too heavily on the cane. “I think we’re done here?” 

Clint is already cleaning up, kicking the gun away and grabbing his knife back, viciously.

They make a show of walking away without a care in the world and Phil concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other because he knows Clint and Natasha are already keeping watch.

The car is actually parked in a garage, for which Phil is grateful because if getting it back was more complicated than crossing the street, he’s not sure he’d still be on his feet when all is said and done. As it is, he can’t bite back the moan of happiness that bubbles up the moment his body is no longer supporting its own weight, even accidentally letting his body go too soon and his back hitting the seat too hard doesn’t compare to the rich relief of a dark and cool interior.

After that, reality sort of fades a little. He can feel Clint putting a cool towel on his forehead and the cold air hitting his chest as his bandages are checked and then the softest of kisses on his fingers and cheek. He knows they eventually stop back at the hanger and that Clint puts pills in his mouth and then water. There’s flashes of undressing and a washcloth but mostly he’s asleep, or unconscious, in his quick bouts of wakefulness he cannot tell difference but Clint sooths him back down before he can start to worry.

He finally wakes fully to the dull pain of an IV and the high pitched warbles of a heart monitor. Clint’s hand stops him from panicking. “You’re Phil Coulson again, don’t worry.” Phil relaxes and works on getting his eyelids to open at the same time. When he focuses on Clint at first all he can see are deep circles and a worried smile. “I think Doc Bloc has doubts about our commitment to your recovery.”

Phil chuckles, it sounds dry and rusty, Clint is already offering him a straw before he can finish clearing his throat. The water is heaven and so is Clint’s hand resting on his wrist.

It takes a week to get back to where he was and Doc Bloc spends a lot of it explaining in great detail what he risked. Also, she calls him a lot of names. It’s really the names that are starting to bug him.

The first Avenger call out happens two weeks later and Phil is surprised it takes this long, there was a lot of alien tech left out for the grabbing before it could all be cleared up. Though, maybe it took this long to figure out the most destructive way to use it, who knows? The Avengers are sent to the Hudson river and Stark moans about it probably being the only corrosive around that could ruin his suit. Even Rogers gets that one, Phil guesses terrible jokes about the Hudson have been around forever.

Clint dashes off with a frantic kiss and then Phil feels small and alone inside this vast tower.

“Agent Coulson, Sir has left his lab open for you, if you wish to view the battle.”

Phil’s eyebrows raise, but he gets into the waiting elevator without delay. “His lab?”

“It has the most comprehensive access to the mainframe and the ability to show multiple angles at once as well as be controlled by minute hand gestures.”

Ah, so everyone knew about the typing embargo.

Tony’s lab is a cross between a hurricane landing pad and a work of art. Jarvis already has the screens up by the time he sits down. Phil blinks and stares harder. “This is a SHIELD feed.”

“Sir has instructed to me to carefully explain that I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Phil smirks. “Right. While we’re being confused, can I get the the command center’s communication stream as well?”

Around him, voices start talking, Tony must have this room wired inch by inch, it’s amazing the level of 3D awareness it results in. He knows all the voices and smiles a little at Jasper’s exasperated commentary on Clint’s free scaling a nearby factory.

“Two of your teammates can fly Hawkeye!” 

While the Avengers are working decently well as a team, you can see the friction between them and the SHIELD agents working with them. There’s been a strict division and lack of communication since Phil rejoined the land of the living, that they’re cooperating at all means both sides recognize the need.

They are fighting gigantic glowing squids, which for the most part looks organic but Phil can see the telltale green/yellow sickly glow of Chitauri tech. Clint, who can unerringly narrow down plausible targets, gives the small patch of tech a go, the squid squeals in anger and becomes unstable, but it’s also no longer part of the group movements and seems more susceptible to physical attacks. Phil waits for someone to notice it, but there’s too much going on and even Clint can’t keep track of the one squid when the others are still attacking. His shot has no immediate positive affect so he’s not trying for more.

Phil shakes his head and can hear the strain in Jasper’s voice, there’s too much data and on top of that these people don’t know the Avengers like Phil does, after only two weeks of shared gym time it’s obvious he knows more about them than anyone else in the field.

“JARVIS, can you patch me in?”

“Already done, I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting the on switch.”

Phil sees a softly glowing button and flicks a finger. “Sitwell, they need to hit the patch of Chitauri tech under the main flap of their bodies—”

“Who the hell is this?” Jasper snaps before Phil can finish explaining.

“Sir!” the lead tech, probably Woo yells, “There’s an outside signal tangled into our communications web.”

“This is Coulson.” The entire web goes silent.

“What?” Jasper asks brokenly.

Phil closes his eyes and curses. No wonder no one’s called or visited. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew.”

“I— Phil. I didn’t.” Jasper takes a noisy breath. “What were you saying?”

He explains again, slower, because he can tell Jasper, and the rest, are having a tough time hanging on. The Avengers catch Jasper’s side of the conversation and are determinedly not saying anything. They get back on track quickly enough and soon the glowing, floating squids are taken down in messy, jelly like, explosions. Which at least only cause a minimal of property damage.

When the Avengers stumble onto the communal floor all looking tired and dirty, Phil isn’t expecting Jasper, Maria and Melinda to follow them in. Their eyes are red and puffy and Jasper has visible tear lines down his grimy face. Melinda is the first one to break formation though and her steps quicken to a run until she hauls him into a hug.

“Watch the stitches!” Clint calls carelessly from the side. Phil looks at him and he sees a happy smile and sad eyes. Clint understands this moment well.

When Melinda lets go, Jasper steps up and the ragged breath in Phil’s ear tells him that he’s only holding on by a thread. When Jasper lets go, Maria moves in but she doesn’t reach out to him. 

They stare at each other until Maria flinches and looks away. “I suspected,” she says in a shaky voice.

“Based on what?” Phil asks mildly. “A gut feeling? A twitch in Fury’s eye?”

“They weren’t your cards.”

“Oh Maria,” Phil reaches out and hugs instead, “it’s fine.” 

Then with a silent signal there’s a group hug and Clint’s huge arms are enfolding as many of them as possible and Melinda makes a grumpy noise about slime on her very clean suit thank you very much.

“S’what you get for running away to do office work,” Clint tells her but makes an effort to only touch her with the only clean three square inches he’s got.

There’s a muffled noise and from the corner of his eye he can see Rogers clamping a hand over Tony’s mouth and dragging him out of the room. The rest have already left.

Jasper, Melinda and Maria stay at the tower through the post mission orgy of food instead of heading back to SHIELD and filing the after action report. Technically, barring medical emergency, all agents have 24 hours to file the initial report, but by level 7 you’ve learned that sooner is better. Jasper’s is technically the most important but all three of them probably have incident related paperwork. It’s a form of silent protest that both warms and worries him.

A pattern establishes itself right away. Any action that requires coordination between the Avengers and SHIELD, Phil joins them from Tony’s lab and works with whoever is in charge of the command post that day, eventually all three of them insist on deferring to him both on and off the record and Phil Coulson becomes the strategic coordinator for all Avengers incursions.

Phil is sure that wording has to be Maria, it’s got her handwriting all over that triple word score. She’s also the only one who could have authorized his paycheck. Though Phil is pretty sure Jasper is the one who signed the consulting contract for him. It’s not that unusual for a full time agent to default to contract work as a sort of compromise sabbatical. The benefits don’t change, the paychecks are similar, just doled out in a more haphazard way.

Three months in and Phil no longer has to wear bandages and the sling is only required for specific types of events. Doc Bloc still hasn’t got any answers on the missing time or the mystery drugs and Phil isn’t quite ready to ask Tony to do the digging for him. Still, there’s a comfortable sort of joy that permeates his life. They’re in the middle of a call out in New Jersey and Phil is testing out the new portable command controls based off his uses in Tony’s lab as a preliminary step to getting back out into the field when Natasha calls in. “Does anyone have eyes on Hawkeye?”

That’s when Phil realizes the its been minutes since the last time he heard Clint’s voice. 

Tony checks in next. “His perch is empty.”

Rogers is next. “He was moving to a better location, south west from here.”

Two agents are already running to investigate. “He’s not on the roof.” Stark is already there.

“Check in and around the building,” Phil orders.

“I have not seen him either.” Thor offers.

The hulk just growls in the distance and then smashes.

“Back to work, we’ve got people on it.” Phil orders because there’s nothing left to do. 

The battle finishes quickly, the call to an AIM stronghold is obviously leaked information, if there had been anything, it’s long gone by the time they get there with the exception of their new favorite attack drones.

JARVIS sends the SHIELD techs all the footage he has and both human and electronic eyes start to sort it out. Phil reminds himself to breath because he’s not ready to shut down yet, he needs to make sure everyone is okay and that everyone has a job and then he needs to put someone else in charge so he can go a little crazy for a while. Just a while.

They’re all gathering in the meeting room of Stark Tower when Jasper runs in, a single sheet of paper in hand. “We found something.” He puts it on the table. It’s a photograph, glossy and colorful of Clint and him just after the fighting stopped in the small seated area adjacent to the precinct. On it, Clint’s arm is clearly visible, the one that has the torn sleeve. You can easily make out his tattoo. 

DO THE AVENGERS KNOW?

The room explodes into ideas, all revolving around Clint and his shady past. Even Tony is making obnoxious references to Barney Barton when Natasha meets his gaze. He closes his eyes and breathes out, hard. “Fuck!” Phil kicks the chair behind him in anger. “God fucking damn it, we were so stupid!”

The whole room stares at him in shock. 

“It’s not about him,” he points to the photo, “it’s about me.”

The shocked silence sticks around until Tony, who quite frankly does not get enough credit for his ability to deflect attention when needed, speaks up, “Wow, Agent, I didn’t know you were programmed to curse.”

Jasper laughs, “I forgot, these guys don’t know you very well.”

Phil feels his withering look settle into something familiar rather than murderous. He’s still angry, but for now, it’s tempered. His colleagues, friends, are no longer staring in shock, but expectation, he knows things they need hear so they can plan. It’s hard to let it go, all of that information. At best, he can chip off small pieces at a time, as long as he can find the right pieces.

“I was born Michael Paul Sullivan, my father was a low level mafia enforcer,” he begins, “when I was nine years old, he murdered a man, cruelly and callously and from what I saw and later read in the reports, very violently.” It sounds simple, stripped down of relationships and emotions and the politics of Family. “He wasn’t much of a father and in some ways, it was a relief.”

He grabs the chair that was kicked across the room and brings it back. Everyone sits when he does. “My mother had been gone… for a long time and CPS was ready to place me in a group home when my Aunt, my father’s sister-in-law, intervened. Technically it should have taken more than that, she’d remarried after my uncle’s death, so really, their claim was thin at best. But CPS was overloaded and my Uncle, Step Uncle, had a lot of influence.”

At the time, he had been conflicted, at first, the idea of being away from his family, in any way, had felt like the grand prize, but even the few days in the system had taught him that it wasn’t a better place, just different. So his first night in a warm room, with soft covers and enough food and a door that locked, well he spent time wondering if this wasn’t better. Then his Uncle gave him a job.

“By 15, I already had enemies,” Phil confesses, “I learned how to behave early on, even when to apply violence, when it was expected of me, but…” he trails off into a painful memory. A slap, an angry sneer, a suggestion too many, math corrected absently that implicated an accountant of skimming profits. “It wasn’t a good fit. For me.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, working for SHIELD, is that some people are very small, they have a hard time envisioning the give and take outside of their own world,” Phil continues, “they hired someone who, based on his reputation and their own inability to differentiate between circumstances, should have not had trouble fulfilling the contract. To be fair, he showed up to the job interview as not quite himself.”

Now he activates the interface available on the table and brings up the newspaper articles and some of the agency photographs. “He screwed them over, well that’s how they’d see it, he’d say that they didn’t have much room to talk.”

A smoking crater were the warehouse was, a headline talking about the uncovering of a sex slave ring, another about an especially large drug bust. “He got himself hired and had his own agenda, when he left, I went with him.”

Phil remembers those assessing eyes, watching him watch the room. He remembers a shadow in the corner when Phil’s eyes skimmed down the numbers sheet across the table. He remembers kindness, of a sort that he’d never felt before even as the eyes in the room assume Phil is now a gift for this man.

“Our leaving, angered a lot of people, including me in his escape was apparently, especially galling.” Phil inputs names and dates next. Double C’s, the two parole hearings, his Uncle. “My father’s first parole hearing came up a few years ago. There was a conversation with my Uncle, words were exchanged but nothing significant. The second one was a few months ago, this time the head of the Five Families,” next to him Jasper gasps, Natasha nods like it’s just confirmation, everyone else is saving files to their personal tablets, “met us, we’re around the same age, by the time I left it was obvious we were being set up to be enemies, enough stuff to make teenagers hate you forever, our conversation was a bit more… involved.”

“What he means,” Natasha corrects, “is that he and Clint kicked his goon’s asses.”

Phil smiles grimly. “Mostly.”

Their discussion picks up again and it takes a while but mostly it rounds down to, they’re not sure why.

With a shrug Rogers says, “I feel like we’re missing something simple.”

Tony throws his hands up. “Yeah, there’s literally no connection to SHIELD other than this Double C guy being on the watch list.”

Jasper frowns and taps some keys but shakes his head.

“They are small minded,” Natasha says, “they don’t understand you,” she points to Phil, “not just in general, but you, specifically.”

The memories weigh him down but he works hard to sort them logically. “They live in their own world,” he says slowly. “They can’t envision that I’d tell you the truth.”

“That you’d be here at all, I think.” Jasper adds.

Phil’s eyebrows climb up. “They think I’m still with the guy who screwed them over when I was 15? And I what, had an Avenger on tap for some quick bodyguard work?” Everyone around the table makes some sort of nodding gesture and Phil narrows his eyes, deep in thought. “Well,” he says, “I guess Michael should go see what they want.”

They scatter to pack, Phil thinks about trying to limit the number of people but Tony is already reserving a suite at the Marriott under an assumed name and Jasper is on the phone to Melinda and Maria so he goes to pack. It’s a harder chore than he thinks it should be until Maria shows up at his door.

“A gift.” She tosses a folded ID wallet.

He flips it open and stares in shock.

“Jasper explained some. We thought it might be easier talking to the local PD if you had to.”

Under his fingers is a familiar SHIELD badge, all burnished silver and dark lines, but the photo ID doesn’t say Phil Coulson. “I…” his voice catches.

“Welcome to SHIELD,” Maria says, “Agent Sullivan.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay this really exploits some plot points from Agents of SHIELD and sort of ignores others. Partially b/c it was plotted before some details came out. Timeline wise it's important to note that it takes place MONTHS before AOS begins to take place.

Once he has his badge certain decisions become easier. Piece by piece he sheds Phil Coulson. It’s painful and terrifying to do it alone. He likes Phil Coulson and is pretty convinced that’s who he actually is, but to do this, Phil Coulson has to go away. They don’t want him, they want Michael, he almost pities them because it’s not Michael that they’re going to get. They want what he had become. Too bad they have no idea what they’re asking for.

One by one he scrapes up his tattoos, black ink slowly spreading along his skin. The one that’s most difficult is his left shoulder, the dual face, the dark pressing directly against the light. He wipes away the paste and feels the identity settle onto his shoulders heavily.

After that is clothing. In the back of their closet is a garment bag. A bag that has followed him from house to house and home to home. It should, by rights, be in a hidden cache with the rest of his former life but after he’d told Clint and then later showed him, he’d never been able to put back the base package.

He has a talk with JARVIS. The Avengers have a couple of dedicated, on site, fabrication units for their uniforms. They are made of the best and toughest materials, but they are routinely put up against goop, gunk and various sharp objects. He gives Jarvis his specifications and has him use the measurements taken from his most recent medical scan. By the time its delivered, by a deeply and disturbingly aware roomba look alike, he’s finished packing and is attempting to decide on a weapon. 

As much as he wants to take the katana, he’s had little practice with in in recent years, the sais are easier to discretely maintain. Along with them he packs a handful of knives and a few standard weapons and their holsters, making sure the guns can carry the standard ammunition packed for SHIELD ops.

For now, he dresses in Phil Coulson’s best suit but picks a darker, wine colored shirt and skips the tie entirely. He slips his new ID into his pocket and grabs his kit. They’ll finish briefing on the plane to save time.

Phil tells them about Holtz, about Callahan, about how it’ll be a fight to get them to listen to him. There’s some debate about who will go with him, Rogers volunteers to help lend credibility but Maria shuts that down quickly, there’s a look in her eye that says she knows Phil is no longer bound by the internal rules of Agent Coulson any more. He nods at her in agreement and moves on with the briefing. 

The entire team, even Stark, listens with abnormal quiet as he lays out the familiar strategies of the Five Families and the various information they may or may not want from him.

“It’s possible,” he finishes off with a wince, “they finally figured out that I was the one that dismantled several of their businesses over the years.”

Natasha offers him a smug smile from the cockpit. “I always wondered about that.”

“About what?” Rogers asks.

“Agent Coulson,” Jaspers speaks up, “sometimes volunteers for the occasional mafia related mission. No one volunteers for those, they’re long, messy and often there’s no clear idea if you actually won or not.”

“As handler,” Phil corrects, “I’d plan it, run it and occasionally sit in the van, but I’d never go in the field for those.”

When they land, he and Maria head right for the precinct while everyone else regroups at the hotel. Their ear wigs go live within minutes, Melinda is running comms back at SHIELD mission control in case they need more backup than a bunch of angry super heroes. 

Attempting to go through security with a badge and gun gets Captain Callahan’s attention faster than anything Phil has ever done before.

“What kind of bullshit are you trying to pull?” He comes in already red and angry, his uniform especially rumpled. 

Holtz follows a half step behind him, also too rumpled for a single work day that’s barely over. Phil narrows his eyes and studies them while he lets Maria sort it out.

“You really expect me to believe this bullshit?” Callahan blusters.

“I expect you to do your job,” Maria tells him, slowly, patiently and methodically, “and call the people you’re supposed to call to confirm our identities.”

Holtz is pulling out his cell phone and Callahan continues to blunder on about how this isn’t actually possible but if it was there’s no way he’s letting some high and mighty authority push him around in his own precinct. In his ear, Phil can hear Melinda taking the call and confirming their IDs but Callahan’s idiocy has just stepped on his last nerve.

“Have you considered,” Phil asks mildly, “that if you didn’t approach all problems that you find even vaguely threatening like a bull in a china shop other people wouldn’t feel the need to assert their authority so completely?”

Callahan goes even redder and turns to Phil with his arm already swinging. Phil, for the first time in a very long time, holds nothing back. Still, he picks an economical, efficient fighting style that most people will, correctly or incorrectly, associate with secret agents. Though dislocating the asshole’s thumb probably feels better than it should. Callahan goes down with a wail and they are surrounded by uniforms holding guns.

Holtz steps up, phone already put away and a sour look on his face. “Oh for god’s sake Jonathon, they’ve confirmed it, deal with your bruised ego later.”

Maria leans down and fixes Callahan’s thumb without warning, it makes the uniforms jump, but without further orders or an obviously aggressive move, they do nothing.

“Excellent,” Phil breaths out, “now would you please tell me what exactly is going on? Because the entire department,” they’d all come running at the scream, “looks like they’ve been up all night and it’s barely noon. I have a bad feeling it’s related to our problem.”

They are escorted, warily, to the squad room for a conversation and Phil spends most of it trying to remain calm.

“The Organized Crime Task Force was first alerted to something big about 3 weeks ago,” Holtz starts, “but upon investigating they found that the project, whatever it was, had been in the making for months. They’d only recently lifted their heads above waters that we watch.”

He watches as Holtz lays out the kidnapping of Clint Barton. It’s agonizing. Especially because all of the reports, all of the language refers to Clint as ‘The Package’. If Carmine Caspiche has figured out who Clint actually is, he hasn’t shared it.

Eventually he can no longer hold in his impatience. “What do they want for him? What are they hoping to gain?”

Holtz actually looks a little shame faced. “We have no idea. It’s not their style, kidnap and ransoms are high risk/high reward propositions, but it also can get you a lot more scrutiny, especially if it falls through or,” and he gives Phil a wary look that holds more respect than he’s ever received from this man in his life, “ you grab the wrong person.”

Phil examines the papers. “Considering they left me a note, I’m thinking it’s not money they’re after.”

Callahan, who has remained a silent but brooding specter snorts, “I’m resisting the appropriate comment about a tiger and its stripes.”

“Do not,” Phil spins on his heal, raising only a finger in Callahan’s direction and is viscerally satisfied when he flinches, “talk to me.” Phil hates these people for not seeing him, but instead for seeing a budding criminal with no hope for a better life, for not helping him.

Maria gives him a bored look, but it disguises prurient interest. They’ve worked the occasional undercover op but Phil tends to get put in her role, she’s rarely seen him like this. Angry, keyed up and not afraid to show it, not afraid to lash out. She’s still scanning the various papers and he’s watching her more than listening to Holtz and the rest of the squad speculate. When she stiffens he sees it first and stands, in the middle of someone else’s monologue, and walks to her and waits.

She shows him the folder. “The reason Carmine came to our attention was that he was slowly becoming the go to guy three party transactions.”

Phil is scanning the folder. “You mean, I have something, you have something, we both want something but not necessarily what you have, lets make a deal?”

“Basically.” 

He reads further into the description of the operation and curses. “That son of a bitch, he’s using my plan.” As a young entrepreneur Phil had been told that if he wanted pocket money, he should get a job, the problem was that his ‘internship’ took up most of his time. So he’d worked out a sort of high school level black market. Before he’d left his organization had gained the interest of some higher ups in the family and the attention had been nerve wracking even as it made him feel accomplished.

Maria gives him an interested look and behind them all the cops that knew him as a kid make disparaging noises. Callahan, for once, keeps quiet. She runs her finger down the line of suspected shipments, “there’s been a run on esoteric medical equipment.”

He blinks, reads the list over again frowns a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. Phil turns back to the small gathering of detectives looking both annoyed and intrigued at them. “Has the word centipede come up in any of your investigations?” It’s the shopping list of an organization moving onto the next phase of research.

The detectives all frown, working through their imperfect recalls, Phil lets them have it but focuses on the woman answering the phones whose eyes look worried. He gives Maria a nod and wanders in her direction.

“So,” he says grabbing a chair and sitting next to her, “what are they missing?”

She blushes and looks away and he waits patiently until she whispers her concern to him. She tells him about the afternoon there was discussion about a bug problem, she remembers it was odd because it wasn’t spiders or roaches but she remembers looking through the files, just quickly, because she had her own pest problem and the idea of hiring the same company as the mafia made her skin crawl even more.

“It sounds silly when I say it,” she’s still blushing and her fingers are hopeless tangled in the phone cord. “But I made the appointment that day, I can look up the appointment in my phone it couldn’t have been more than a week later.”

He nods at her and she fiddles nervously with her phone pulling the date up easily. Three months ago. The timing is right. He pulls the files and scans quickly, looking for anything— “Raina.”

During his recovery Phil kept up with current SHIELD activities as best he could, despite his leave of absence, Fury never pulled his clearance so he is more than aware of HYDRA’s recent upswing in action, the extremis project, AIM, the burgeoning organization called centipede and the woman in the flower dress. The information on them is thin, all SHIELD knows is that they’re taking up the super soldier cause with a new amalgamation of ideas. Their moves up until now have been mostly research based, but the data did point towards them moving into a testing phase soon.

Maria is next to him instantly, he hands her the files. When she finishes she looks back up at him. “What does Centipede want with him?”

“I don’t think it’s him they want, not directly,” Phil says, “remember, Carmine is now a broker, not just a broker, but he finds the missing pieces of the deal.”

“So who does want him then?” Maria asks.

They stare at each other, this is the point where Phil usually turns to the local LEOs and sooths any ruffled feathers, too bad he’s not Phil Coulson. “Maybe we should just ask him?”

Holtz, who has been pretty accommodating up till now snorts derisively. “Just ask him? What a load of bullshit. Who is this guy? For that matter, who are you?”

Phil turns to look at Holtz coolly, he debates his answer for a scant few seconds. Ironically, it’s a question that has plagued Phil a lot in his lifetime. “My name is fairly unimportant,” Holtz rolls his eyes because, yes, it sounds a little over the top, but right that second Phil _feels_ a little over the top. “Who I am is a state of mind, one that I was more than happy to retire a long time ago. Then someone went and kidnapped my partner and they have unknowingly awakened the beast. You may call me Agent Sullivan, I’ll even answer to it.” Phil leans into him, invading his personal space easily. “But I would suggest you stay out of my way.” The petty games these people play will only get someone hurt and Phil’s not too discriminating at the moment.

Holtz finally looks at him, really looks at him and to his credit he only shows a little fear. “What’s your plan, knock on his door? Ask politely for your friend back?”

“Uh hey Ph— Michael,” Jasper’s voice comes to his ear, “you’ve been live at the hotel for a while, just FYI.”

Phil cares very little about what the others are overhearing, he can’t, if he does he won’t be able to do this, to be this. “Well, I wasn’t planning on going alone.”

Maria finishes them up at the station before Phil lets himself be goaded into more word games and the occasional dislocated joint. Callahan demands to be part of the operation, Maria stumbles the beat, still waiting for him to be the peace maker, to be the compromise, to find the solution. Phil keeps quiet because with each passing minute his solution involves more and more C4.

As he and Maria get into their car there’s debate about who to go to first, ultimately Phil suggests skipping right to Carmine. His uncle is a small fish in an ever expanding sea and not worth the energy. Besides, if this is truly about him, he’ll probably be close to Carmine during the operation anyway. Callahan follows them in an unmarked car. 

When they pull up to the mansion that is Carmine’s home base Jasper and Natasha have joined them.

“Are you sure he’ll be home?” Jasper asks falling into step. 

Phil nods. “These guys go to the office when the clubs open. We’ll be lucky if he’s awake. Though considering what’s going down, he might never have gone to sleep.” He stops and takes a deep breath and then turns to look at his friends, ignoring Callahan for the time being. “I don't like the man I am right now and if I don't like him, you will be appalled.” He meets each of their eyes in turn, Natasha’s is the most comforting, “When we go in there don’t expect Phil Coulson to come out of hiding if things get tense.”

In his ear Rogers speaks, “Agent C— Sullivan, I don’t know if—”

“Captain,” Phil interrupts, “I honestly don’t need you to do this, so if you’re worried about crossing a personal line you’re welcome to tap out.” The line crackles ominously, silent. “I promise not to kill indiscriminately.”

“Just,” Rogers comes back, “remember who you have to be when this is done.”

Phil closes his eyes. “I know. Thank you.”

The five of them march up to the front door, the front gate opens for them without asking, they’re expected. Twenty feet away the door opens and Carmine steps out. Strategically placed around the foliage is his security. “I trust you have a search warrant,” he calls to them.

Phil strides forward quickly. “Who needs a search warrant? I just want to have a little conversation.”

Carmine is in his bathrobe, his expensive silk pajamas peek out from under the bottom and his slippers are leather and supple. He’s mocking them. “Well then it’s lucky I decided to take breakfast on the patio,” he gestures to his left where a large table and a series of chairs sit. On the table is enough food for an army. Someone must have been scouting the station. Phil decides to sit down. It puts him closer to the butter knives. No one suspects the butter knives.

There’s a surreal few minutes where food and beverages are offered. Callahan refuses everything. The SHIELD agents take coffee. Phil and Natasha start buttering a bagel.

Once everything is settled, Carmine leans back in his throne of a chair and smiles. “Now that we are civilized, what can I do for you fine people?”

“What do you want for him?” Phil asks immediately, no point in beating around the bush, everyone at the table knows why they’re there.

“You know,” Carmine sips his coffee slowly, “when they told me you’d come alone, none of his little Avengers friends in sight, I didn’t believe them. It took a lot of… assurances,” that word obviously means money and favors, “on their part that you’d try to take care of this quietly. They say they’ve studied you for months, your career in SHIELD, that one was actually a shocking revelation for the family, your personal life, your friends.” He takes another sip. “Honestly, I’m a little shocked you took SHIELD agents with you considering how carefully you told me you despised and were ashamed of your past.”

“Avengers?” Callahan sounds strangled. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh Captain,” Carmine looks at him, “you are deliciously prejudiced, you made it easy. Thanks for the pictures by the way.”

Phil’s head turns slowly to see Callahan shaking his head in denial but no, this is exactly the kind of bullshit thing he would do and he wouldn’t even see it crossing a line. “Why?”

“Because,” Carmine says, getting Phil’s attention back, “he’s a petty little man with petty little grudges. You see, that tattoo matched to nothing in any database he could get his hands on and he wanted you Michael, he salivated at the idea of pinning you down and charging you with every crime he could. So he came to me. Made a deal.”

“I swear to god Jonathon,” Phil seethes not even turning back to him, “if you say another word you will regret it.”

Callahan makes a strangled noise and Phil assumes either Maria or Natasha have stopped him from opening his mouth and digging his hole any deeper.

“It was pretty impressive,” Carmine goes on, “how hard it was to find anything. With every database empty, we had to rely on eye witnesses and considering how long it’s been since anyone has seen that particular tattoo, it took some effort and a very special guest.”

Two goons bring out a struggling man with a bag over his head and something about him sets Phil’s teeth on edge. There’s a slight familiarity to the body language. When the bag is ripped off Phil’s teeth grind in anger. “Barney. You absolute idiot.”

He glares at all of them, contempt clear in his face. Carmine signals a goon to release the gag. “Why should my brother get to be a super hero when I’m stuck doing shit jobs for assholes like this.”

Carmine only looks amused at the insult. “He didn’t come to us first, he went to someone else but he wasn’t really their prime real estate so to speak. Then they heard his last name and kept him around for safekeeping. I’m sure if I hadn’t come knocking they’d have put him to good use soon anyway.”

Phil’s limit is almost reached. “What. Did. You. Do.”

“It’s amazing,” Carmine says easily, “how even a fully trained operative like Hawkeye can be distracted when his brother shows up in the middle of a firefight.”

Now he’s done. Phil has Carmine by the neck between one breath and the next, the butter knife on his jugular. Maria, Jasper and Natasha are only seconds behind him, guns out and covering his back. “Where is he?”

Carmine laughs. “I don’t have him anymore, I don’t want him. I never wanted him. Centipede should be just about done stringing him up as bait for you though.” 

Phil digs the knife in harder. “I think you have vastly misunderstood your position here. Though I do think I’ve figured out what you thought was going to happen. You thought you were going to either hand me over to them or point me in the right direction and wait for them to catch me. Then one of yours, and I bet Barney over there probably has a similar promise from someone in Centipede, gets pumped up with whatever concoction Centipede is working on and you get an unstoppable enforcer and they get a test subject in real world conditions. So what if he has a good chance of going absolutely insane, if it works then it’s worth the risk. And finally, as the icing on this poorly constructed cake, you get the delicious aftertaste of finally punishing me for running away and making fools of the family, am I right?”

“You are good,” Carmine admits, “so if you’d kindly—erk!”

Phil exerts more pressure. “What you’ve failed to account for are those years between leaving the family and joining SHIELD. Not even SHIELD knows the whole story, I wouldn’t be an agent if they did.” That’s only a minor embellishment, Fury knows the whole story, told in a drips and drabs over too much booze and dark nights of sleeplessness. “You also failed to account for the fact that Hawkeye is not only an Avenger, he’s the man I love and you helped take him from me. The last person who took him from me got blown up into so many pieces the dental records took months to confirm.”

Everyone tenses dramatically.

“I could paralyze you,” Phil extemporizes, moving the knife for emphasis, “it’s a lot less difficult than one would think. Or maybe I could cut off an ear or pluck out an eye.” Carmine finally starts to understand the severity of the situation and his body begins to shakes in fear. “Or you could cut the fucking games and tell me what I want to know.”

He quickly spits out an address and Phil thanks him politely and releases him. He walks away without looking back, knowing that Jasper, Maria and Natasha are doing it for him. “Callahan, if you try and slip away I will come and find you one night and fix you permanently.”

“I’ve got him,” Jasper says, “don’t worry about it.”

Phil has already forgotten.

By the time all four of them make it to the hotel suite, Maria and Jasper trailing behind by fifteen minutes or so, Stark and Melinda have combined resources and there are satellite images, high res, infrared and few others that seem useless at first glance but the mass of information as a whole is comforting. He is greeted by a series of serious faces. Stark looks shocked but hiding it, Bruce looks strangely respectful, Thor looks respectful but surprised and Rogers, well, it’s hard to tell what Rogers is thinking. He’s got a good battle face.

When they sit down, everyone gets to business quickly. The compound may be adhoc, but it’s well fortified. Centipede has taken the factory with the best strategic advantages. They did not account for IronMan, Hulk, Thor and Captain America, it can be seen in the lack of fortification in certain parts of the building. They did not account for Phil. Based on everything, he’s fairly sure they’ve dismissed Michael Sullivan as Phil Coulson’s little bit of rough background. He’s also pretty sure they’ve missed that Clint is more than a friend. They’re private and in recent months they’ve been barricaded behind the firewalls of Stark Industries.

They hammer out a plan and separate. They agree and it needs to wait for dark and Phil knows its the best idea but each of those minutes only stokes his anger and fear more. “Everybody get some rest,” is what he says, “meet up tonight at 1800 for dinner and final briefings and update any strategies based on their final moves, we’ll change after, remember, they know we’re coming.”

Phil retires to his room, but isn’t surprised by the quiet knock that comes a few minutes later. He lets Natasha inside without comment.

“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay,” she says quietly, “but I need to know if you can handle it.”

He gives her a tired smile, of course she’s figured out what he’s going to spring on strike team later. “I need a little space,” he says, “but when the time comes, I’ll be ready.”

She gives him a long look and then nods. “I sent Barney on with Maria, she’s got him on his way to the closest SHIELD holding center.”

Phil nods. “He’ll want to talk to him eventually.”

“I know,” she sighs wearily, “but I hear family is always difficult.” She gives him a meaningful look.

He drops his head and laughs. “It’s a real bitch, yeah.”

Natasha comes and sits next to him on the bed. “I’ll be right next to you,” she says and Phil is definitely sure she’s figured out the final infiltration arrangements, “please,” she says carefully and that catches his attention, “let me do most difficult parts.”

He looks up and takes her hand. Natasha isn’t talking about the difficult shots or the grueling climbs but the morally ambiguous parts that no one seems to want to acknowledge will probably be part of this op. “Natasha,” he says quietly, “that you offered, means a lot, but you’re not saving me from anything I haven’t already done at least a half dozen times before.”

Natasha squeezes his hand and shakes her head kindly. “Not with witnesses.” Phil is about to correct her but she squeezes his hand again. “Not with _these_ witnesses.”

She’s right and if she thinks he hasn’t constantly thought about those good men out there who’ve never had to make these choices she’s not as good as she claims to be. “I don’t know,” he admits, “if I’ll be able to do that.”

Natasha nods but doesn’t move. “Once,” she says carefully, “many years ago, I ran into a man who saved my life and then many years later, he saved it again.” She looks at him and her eyes soften, “he saved my life because he took under his wing a scared and angry adolescent and he trained him into the good and honorable man he knew that scared child could be. He taught that child to be more than his roots, his history, tried to make him.”

“I was supposed to be his successor,” Phil whispers brokenly, “but I couldn’t, it wasn’t a life I could live. I was so unhappy.”

“You needed to make your own choice,” Natasha pulls him into a hug, “he knew that. Just like you knew that when you sent Clint after me.”

The sob sucker punches him and Natasha holds him through it, through all of them. He forgets sometimes, the rumors of her age, the pictures of her unchanging that sometimes show up in photographs faded and yellowed with age, but the truth is she’s probably his mother’s age, if she’d lived. Despite her life, her training, Natasha is old enough to recognize when someone needs comforting or emotional release and Phil needs those like air at the moment. He hasn’t stopped since Clint was taken, since hours before actually, and if he doesn’t take a few moments then god knows what’ll happen when they go to rescue him.

She holds him until he’s just slumped shoulders and red eyes and then she stands and pulls him upright, pulls the covers down and tucks him into bed. After his shoes and belt are piled carelessly off to the side and his watch and wallet on the table, she turns the lights off and then climbs in with him, over the covers. “I’ll be here,” she says quietly, “you can rest.”

For the first time in hours he feels he can relax, he can breathe. Behind him, Natasha is pressed against his back, a warm and comforting weight that lets him sleep.

Dinner is a quiet affair, most everyone is eating mechanically, knowing that the food is important but finding it difficult to enjoy the gourmet feast Tony ordered. Even Tony. Their final meeting is tense, during dinner there was a shift change so the guards they’re fighting will be fresh.

They’re finalizing the entry points, Thor and Stark in the sky, Rogers and Maria around back and Natasha and Jasper in the front and Bruce in the van with Phil as backup. That’s when Phil finally speaks up. “Actually, Jasper’s going to be in the van coordinating with Melinda back at SHIELD HQ.” Jasper looks singularly unsurprised, Maria too. Tony, Thor and Bruce just assimilate the information. Rogers is the one who looks uncomfortable.

“Captain Rogers,” Phil says carefully, “they took him because of me, even if I’d considered it before, there’s no way I’m sitting back and letting someone else explain to them why that was a terrible mistake.” He smirks in a wholly unCoulson like way. “They might forget to explain all the reasons and then I’d just have to reiterated it to them all over again once they’re in custody.”

“So,” Rogers hesitates, “they _are_ going into custody?”

“That’s the plan, isn’t it?” Phil bites back his real feelings about this. About how a group like Centipede will use up and dispose of thousands of people without a blink of an eye in the pursuit of their goals. Goals which will probably turn around and kill thousands if not millions if unchecked. He doesn’t say that if this small subsection’s true goals have been Phil all along then whoever is running it is big and sometimes the best you can do with the biggest fish is to gut them before they can start fighting back. The intel isn’t worth the danger. The rest of their spiderweb can be captured and interrogated for nearly as much useful data.

He definitely doesn’t say that if Clint is dead then no one is safe. Not even Phil. 

“Just making sure,” Rogers nods and then turns to go change.

Phil wonders if he’ll be able to look that man in the face when all this is done. In his bedroom he unpacks his suit, it’s black with dark green trimming and highlights. It’s a modified gi, sleeveless and made of the same high density, bullet proof stuff that Clint’s uniform is made of. Instead of the traditional tied belt it’s held closed by the basic SHIELD utilibelt, which has universal fasteners for any number of equipment pouches and weapons. The pants and shoes are basically the same as Clint’s which are also basically the same as most SHIELD tack uniforms. To them he adds various holsters for guns and extra ammo. Next his arm guards slide on, the idea is to keep his biceps visible, the tattoos are an important statement his mentor had said, well worth the possible but unlikely injury. The sais are last, he twirls them easily in his hands before slipping them into their space on his belt.

Normally there’s a mask as well. Something that covers his mouth and most of his face, but this operation doesn’t need that precaution. Phil wants them to know exactly who he is.

Fully changed, he takes a look in the mirror and sees a ghost looking back at him. He sinks to his knees, ankles crossed behind him, and lets his hands hang loosely against his thighs. Meditation is an old and forgotten skill and mostly it’s beyond him right now, but he takes a few long breaths to center himself, to remind himself of days gone by and to feel closer to the man he has just donned. In the quiet he can hear the others gathering in the main room. The booming nature of Tony and Thor, the quiet muttering of Bruce and the familiar patter of SHIELD agents getting into pregame. There’s a light knock on the door and Phil knows it’s Natasha telling him they’re all there.

He stands, easily and with an old grace he’s never really forgotten but hasn’t had need of in many years. He pauses at the door, a hand pressed flat against it and focuses. When he opens the door he must be ready. He must.

Eventually he can hear Jasper give him the perfect opening, he’s briefing them on infiltration protocol, the Avengers aren’t usually called in for something like this. He’s assigning group names, Tango 1, Tango 2, etc. He’s just getting around to naming Phil and Maria Alpha 1 and Alpha 2 when he opens the door.

“Actually, I’ll be going by my personal call sign for this,” everyone turns to him, “No, not that one,” Phil interrupts before Jasper can guess ‘cheese’ because that’ll derail this entire moment. “For this operation, my call sign will be Janus.”

Maria gasps, Jasper just stares at him wide eyed. 

It’s Tony that surprises him though. “Ronin’s lost apprentice?”

That gets Roger’s attention. “Ronin? But he was around when I was—”

“Ronin,” Natasha answers for Phil, “is a name passed down from master to apprentice, it has been around for centuries.”

There’s some conversation about Phil’s outfit, his weapons, his tattoos and he endures it only because they have the time and if they don’t get it out of their systems now it’ll come through as comm chatter later. Natasha runs a finger down his right arm. “They called these the laurel leaves of death,” she’s pointing at the winding vine of leaves on his bicep.

“In a way,” Phil nods, “they are. It started as a laurel leaf, but soon the symbolism outgrew each new addition.” It had been a way to remember his deeds, each leaf a specific death. Not every person he killed, just the main targets. The ones he often felt proud about and then usually, immediately sick.

Natasha sticks by him as everyone sorts themselves out and by the time they’re moving, silently and in the dark, they’re a synchronized machine, sharpened blades and all.

With a loud boom, the distraction starts. Phil and Natasha weave a path of destruction through the outer flanks without any resistance. The factory is a secondary issue, they need to fight through it to reach the cellar entrance. The perils of an older city means there are basements everywhere and Clint’s luck means that’s where he’s stashed. The back half of the building is a warren of rooms, interconnected and without a lot of hallways. By now Rogers and Maria have entered the building and are moving into the computer mainframe area. The data retrieval is secondary, but would be useful. If he and Natasha run into problems, they’ll drop the task and be with them in seconds.

He and Natasha carve a path in blood. No one’s dead, yet, but many of them need medical attention sooner rather than later. Then one of them stands back up and there’s a dull glow under the low lights. A first victim of their new project, definitely extremis based. He calls it in and Rogers appears before too long, but he and Natasha take a long ten seconds to catch their breath. That guy had been very energetic. They slip past Rogers as he holds his own and finally, finally they’re at at a locked floor panel.

They drop down into a dark hallway, there’s a single dull light coming from one direction. Phil doesn’t know anything is wrong until after they get the door open, because there’s no indication that this is the room they ultimately want him in. There’s no open door or shoddy lock. Just a dingy corridor and terrible screams.

When the door swings open, Phil isn’t sure where to look first. Clint is a bruised mess, what he can see of him, very little actual blood, but his skin has dark blooms all over. Some of them are chemical burns, others electric. There’s a woman standing casually over him, her hand reaching out, resting on the machine currently torturing Clint but what really distracts him are the walls.

Pictures of him. It’s almost a wall paper of his face, his cold, dead face. He’s white, bloodless and still and there’s a body bag surrounding him. The dates are clear on them as well. It starts with the day of his death and it goes on for two weeks. The walls tell a story, a terrible story of gross misconduct and torture. Of his body. His dead body.

His nightmares make a horrible sort of sense now. Oh god he might be sick.

Behind him, Natasha makes a noise and then there’s a heavy thud. He spins but it’s too late. The trap is sprung and Natasha is already being dragged away.

“Phil Coulson,” the woman with her hand on the switch turns to face him. “I’ve been absolutely dying to meet you.”

His eyes stray to Clint, whose face he still can’t see, but his limbs, tied though they are, twitch violently. “Raina?” he guesses, her nod confirms it. “Call me Janus,” he says and gets a satisfyingly startled look from her. “You have about ten seconds to turn that off before I get angry,” he points to the machine under her hand.

She turns and feigns surprise. “Oh this? Sure, let’s call it a gesture of good faith.”

Clint relaxes with a pained whine but goes silent with residual tremors quickly. When he’s sure it’s safe he has her in his hands before she can breath another breath. She’s pressed against his front, one hand holding her arms behind her, the other a sai to her stomach. She doesn’t twitch.

“Don’t you want to know what they did to you?” She asks so reasonably and he does, but not at this price. There’s an ominous sound from behind him and he spins them both so he can see the doorway. “Ah yes,” she smiles sweetly, “we’re only in the beginning stage, but we do have two volunteers doing wonderfully.”

Phil sees a barely restrained hulk of a man in the doorway.

“Don’t worry,” Raina smiles, “he’s well trained, he knows we need to talk.”

“We do?” He keeps his hands on her, not really willing to listen to her try and persuade him into something he doesn’t want to do, but he’s got little choice until he can come up with a way to take care of the budding super soldier in the doorway. Right now all he’s got is hoping Clint can recover enough to get out of his bindings and at Phil’s spare weapons. He’s straining to hear Clint do anything, anything at all.

“Have they told you?” She asks. “Did you even know?”

“No,” he says because as long as they’re stuck here, he can fish for information. “No, they haven’t.” He lets his voice quaver, it’s not hard.

“We can help you,” Raina says softly, relaxing into his grip on her arms, “we can find out why they’re lying to you.”

“What good would it do,” Phil takes a deliberate look around the room, “when all of this would still have happened?” 

She tilts her head in an excellent approximation of sympathy. “Answers can be an end in their own right, and ends can lead to new beginnings.”

He doesn’t know whether to be more impressed or shocked that she’s trying to turn him. “I’ve found that endings are just endings Raina, no matter how you pretty them up.”

In his ear he can hear the fight upstairs go their way finally and whatever they did to Natasha was obviously poorly thought out because she’s back in the action and explaining his current situation to the rest of the team.

Rogers and Natasha are in position when he tightens his hands again, hard enough that she winces. “The thing is Raina, if you were talking to Phil Coulson, this might have worked. If you’d taken me successfully and isolated me, maybe played on my fears, Phil Coulson might have agreed to some insane procedure or bargain with the devil to get some answers, because believe me I definitely have questions.”

She actually laughs, a small little giggle of delight. “And you’re not Phil Coulson?”

“No,” he shoves the sai into her gut and enjoys the little bubble of shock that comes to her face before the pain hits, “I’m really not.” Behind her Rogers is well on his way to subduing the guard so he lets Raina fall to the floor and turns to take care of Clint.

His breath catches in his chest. If he’d gotten a good look before— well. It’s done now. Natasha tosses him the keys and he’s unlocking Clint as fast as possible. Even if he’d been tempted, this would have turned the deal sour. They may not have wanted Clint, but he’s obviously considered a nice secondary goal, Raina probably thought they could wring some information out of Clint before disposing of him. Clint’s skin is terribly pale and his heartbeat is very close to tachycardia. When Clint is free Phil runs his hand through Clint’s hair checking for blood, finding none he tips Clint’s head toward his. He’s aware enough to be following Phil’s movements.

“Clint,” he breathes out, voice shaken, “oh god, Clint.” He loses a little time and when he comes back Steve is blocking the door, back turned to them, Raina has been removed and Clint is holding him back, whispering things in his ear. There are a few stray tears in his eyes, he blinks them away and kisses Clint softly on his lips. “Come on, we should clear out of here.”

Phil insists on supporting Clint as he walks away from this terror with the brief break for Thor to easily lift him up the stairs. He passes Maria on the way and quietly tells her to collect the wallpaper in the room. Natasha joins them on the ground floor, silently taking up Clint’s other side. As much as he feels kinship with the other members of their infiltration team, Natasha and Clint make him feel human, because they have histories like his and have made it past them to find good in the world.

Rogers finds him after Clint is deposited onto the gurney of a local ambulance. Surrounding them are the detrius of Phil’s youth. The entire precinct seems to have come out when the disturbance call came in. Holtz is standing in the background, looking stunned and disbelieving. Phil cannot begin to guess if it’s the blood splattered on his skin or the company he keeps. Rogers stops him with a gentle hand before he can swing up into the back of the ambulance that Clint is loaded into.

“I probably would have made the same choice,” he says softly, nodding to Clint, “I think I may have, at one point.”

“She’s not dead Captain,” Phil is feeling defensive now that the shroud of Janus is slowly receding.

“Call me Steve,” Rogers says, “and I know how tempting it was.”

They share a long look and Phil realizes that Rogers— Steve respects him. As he is in that moment. Not dressed up and tamped down and bundled away inside himself. Someplace deep inside of him, a child stands up and cheers and maybe those cards mean something to him after all. “Thank you, Steve.”

Steve nods and then nods at the ambulance, “We’ll see you later,” he pauses deliberately, “Phil.”

As he climbs into the ambulance and takes Clint’s hand back into his, a bone deep ache eases and Phil Coulson smiles softly at his boyfriend, partner, and knows that everything is going to be okay.

EPILOGUE

Six months later.

Phil has been back to work for a little under a month, rescuing Clint had strained his injury enough to cause concern even if the bone deep ache had only made itself known hours later. 

He and Fury had several long conversations during many of which Phil yelled and Fury sat there and stared at him with one sulky eye. Eventually they could have actual conversations again and that’s when the nature of Phil’s job and future had come up. He’s no longer a full time SHIELD agent, he no longer trusts Fury enough to try, he’s more of a liaison to the weird and strange now. 

The Avengers, or at least pieces of them, do take the occasional SHIELD mission, usually if it relates to something big they’ve dealt with or if their special skills are desperately needed. Clint and Natasha have also officially become consultants, though they take more SHIELD work than most. They’d go batty if they were stuck waiting for Avengers call outs even if some months just seem to be a string of them connected by short snatches of sleep. Phil goes with them about half the time, he’s needed less now that their status takes them slightly out of the chain of command. They’re not completely at the whims of their team leaders any more and it tends to get them more respect and more choices.

It helps that Phil already knows which agents they’ll work best with anyway, so he can keep the friction to a minimum.

He works out of the Stark International offices these days. Their security is unparalleled, Pepper had insisted on updating just for him, and their technology cutting edge. He wants for nothing and it’s occasionally fun rubbing that in Jasper or Maria’s nose. In a friendly way.

He’s put away Janus, probably for good. He doesn’t like what he’s capable of doing while wearing his skin, even if he doesn’t actually follow through on all the impulses. That night, after Clint was stabilized and moved to a private room Phil spent a good ten minutes in Clint’s bathroom heaving up his dinner with Clint croaking soothing words from his bed. Though Clint has convinced him to keep the tattoo on his hip out in the open for him to trace idly in bed and as a reminder that your past cannot stay completely buried. It’s his first tattoo and it’s pretty cliche but the small yin/yang still fits him years later. 

He gazes fondly at the simple ring on his finger and remembers the day Clint slid it on, smile so wide it might split his face and he thinks that maybe he’s finally himself, most of the time anyway. The rest of it he spends secure in the knowledge that all the pieces of him also live in Clint and occasionally Natasha, a better safe keeping he couldn’t invent himself.

There’s a sealed missive from SHIELD on his desk when he returns from lunch. A retinal and finger print scan later and he opens up a possible asset file. There’s pages of speculation, dates, places, deeds. Correlation is thin on the ground but if it’s true, then this is definitely his department. He reads the whole thing through before looking at the surveillance photos, he works better that way. Sometimes images can prejudice you early on. 

Under the printed pages is a stack of grainy black and whites and under those are the reason the file got upgraded in priority. Someone got a handful of beautiful digital shots. That the shots exist in and of themselves isn’t too suspicious. Technology these days can sometimes shrink and spread and become so ubiquitous so quickly even the most finely trained operative can lag behind on their skills upkeep. Still, considering who this might be, he studies the file even more carefully. The SHIELD agent who’d put the dossier together had stamped a preliminary kill order on the conclusions.

Phil finds he’s sensitive to that decision these days. There’s something in the photos, he’s almost sure, so he puts in a call for the remaining bulk of the surveillance. The baby agent on the other end asks if he’s sure, that’s practically boxes. He is.

He puts it out of his mind until six large boxes appear several hours later, complete with armed guards, fingerprint turn overs and the like. When the hand off is complete, he starts working. The files are ordered by date and while he’ll definitely go through the rest at some point, especially if he’s right, he sticks with the last six months, he may go back as far as a full year if he needs to. This particular asset is very slippery.

It doesn’t take long. In the last three months there are two photographs, grainy and imperfect but they come with diagrams of the area with all sorts of measurements along with exact camera placements. The asset had walked into, or well, through an op. He didn’t participate or interfere he just strolled. What’s significant is that Phil is absolutely sure he makes eye contact with at least two cameras that were hidden in completely different places at completely different heights.

Phil searches back and finds it happened again, three months before that. He thinks back to the mess of six months ago, the media deluge that followed them and the organization named Centipede that still exists but was cut down to its roots and maybe his first camera blip isn’t a mistake at all. He goes back to the most recent ones, glossy and in full color and he stares at the dark eyes surrounded by smudges and he makes a decision.

He picks up the phone and invites Natasha to dinner. Clint is off on a quick mission so the timing works neatly. Phil tucks away all of the files but the original. He adds the two blips to it and then puts it away in a drawer. Natasha arrives with plastic bags that smell delicious and she hands over a package of dumplings, a sampler pack apparently and Phil is already stuffing one in his mouth as Natasha grabs her own food.

“I don’t know how you find these places,” he says after swallowing, already going for another, “but I won’t ask for fear it will ruin the magic.”

She smiles lightly and digs into her own food. When they’re done, she cleans up and pulls out a small bottle of vodka. The good stuff. “I’ll open that after you tell me what’s wrong.”

Phil laughs quietly. Their friendship, which has always been soft around the edges and full of trust and respect has deepened since that night six months ago. Sometimes they are kindred spirits, sometimes they are old comrades and sometimes they are Clint Barton’s exasperated companions. He pulls out the file from its hiding place. 

“I need a favor,” he tells her and offers up the folder easily. “In a few weeks you’ll receive a file from SHIELD and a request to participate in a mission with a preliminary kill order attached.” Her eyebrows go up a bit, everyone knows the prelim orders are only attached to the most dangerous of people. “They’ll ask you to participate because this target has proven to be extremely difficult to track, let alone track down and get close enough to do anything about him.” 

He lets her read and as she assimilates more and more details her eyes get wider and her body goes still.

“I want you to bring him in instead,” he says just as she’s about to turn the last page to reveal the photographs in back. Her sharp intake of breath as she gets a look at a silver arm glinting in the sun as its owner holds someone against a wall, is her only reaction. By the time she closes the folder and puts it back on the desk, determination slowly filling out her body, Phil already knows her answer.

They seal the deal with two shots of extremely good vodka and after she leaves Phil takes a moment to examine the small card that sits framed on his desk. 

_I’ve made the same decision._

_—Steve Rogers_

Maybe, Phil ponders, he’ll make it again and makes a note to add Steve to the retrieval team.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Trigger warnings:** There are occasional brief mentions of child abuse and torture but no scenes that focus on it.


End file.
